Heidfeld Reverts to Old Williams

Following the troublesome introduction of the new aero package for the French Grand Prix, the team continued to struggle at Silverstone on Friday. Subsequently, Williams have decided that Heidfeld would run as of today with the old specification of the car to allow back-to-back comparisons with the new one.

And after Heidfeld's best time of 1:22.117 for 14th on the grid was only just beaten by two tenths by teammate Mark Webber in qualifying - despite a mistake on the entry to Club corner - the reality is that the new parts do not appear to be the leap-forward the team had expected.

"We tried various things yesterday and in the end I said I would like to go for it and try to see how the old configuration behaved," said Heidfeld. "Today the old and the new packages seemed quite similar.

"It is also true that the other teams have improved their cars, and of course we haven't been developing our old package. We know it's a bit of a drastic decision to change the car midway through a GP weekend, but we struggled quite a lot in France and again yesterday, so last night we took this decision."

Webber, who starts 11th on the grid, added: "Nick and I are still not quick enough. We really need to find more grip. We will be conducting some more investigation over the weekend and we have decided to run the cars in two different set-ups to compare the data. We hope we will get it right for Hockenheim. We've got to work hard, even if it's not easy at the moment."

The continued car troubles have only served to increase engine supplier BMW's frustration at the situation - with their motorsport director Mario Theissen continuing to be far from sympathetic to the team's plight.

"Today's qualifying result reflects the situation last weekend in Magny-Cours," he said. "This was to be expected without any testing that could help us make a step forward. The package in this form is not good enough to achieve a top placing but maybe with some luck we can score some points this weekend."

And in his regular reminder that is clearly aimed at emphasizing that he does not believe BMW are to blame for Williams' troubles, he said: "On the engine side we had no problems."