Sam Michael

In essence, the front ducts were too far from the wheel. As technical director Sam has to carry the can for that, and it was he who had to hear the FIA's evidence, which was pretty clear cut. The fact that Toyota suffered in a similar manner took the pressure off a little, as it showed that the margins concerned are tight, and that how and where the relevant dimensions are taken is open to interpretation.

Both teams will of course argue that they gained no performance advantage, and that may or may not be true. But this was a race which was all about conserving the brakes, and the fact that the offence was directly related to the very part that controls cooling doesn't look very good.

The exclusion aside, it was an encouraging weekend for Williams, and the team outperformed BAR and Renault to regain its expected place as Ferrari's main challenger. Speaking before the brake fuss kicked off, Sam was pretty pleased with the overall performance.

"It was obviously a good result, and you could see by the pit stop laps of everybody that we were competitive in qualifying," he explained. "With the fuel on board we ran just as strongly as everybody else.

"Their car on average was 0.1s quicker over the whole race, and that gave Michael 7s over the race. It was enough for him to just keep in front of us, which is why they beat us on a two-stop.

"At the end of the day we're still disappointed, because we wanted to win. We came here to win and we thought we could win. It looked very good until mid-race, but Michael was too strong for us in those 10 laps before his pit stop. But up until then we were looking good for a win, and that's what we want to do at Indy."

For a while it seemed that Ralf might just do it, but in the second half of the race Michael stayed just far enough ahead to ensure he was safe after the final pit stops unfolded. While Ferrari made their strategy work, Sam says that Williams could not have followed it.

"A two-stop wouldn't have worked for us. We did a lot of homework here with the brakes to make sure that we could race flat out for the whole 70 laps, which we could. Everything was on the limit, but we were monitoring it all and making sure it was OK. And that was the main reason why we didn't want to do a two-stop. Also we didn't want to carry the fuel and fall back in the field.

"We didn't want to get swamped by the field in qualifying, we wanted to be at the front and do what we did. If we were on a two-stop strategy we would have put more load on the brakes, because the fuel load goes up by another 25kgs, so you've got a lot more energy to dissipate into the brakes. We raced flat out and didn't back off at all on the brakes, but we were close to the limit."

At one stage Montoya was giving Michael a hard time, forcing the Ferrari driver to put more load on his brakes than he might otherwise have wished. Did Sam hope that Juan's efforts might tip Ferrari over the edge?

"I was hoping that, yes, because we did see quite a lot of dust coming out of Jenson's car, and also out of Michael's, so we were keeping the pressure on as hard as we could. But he obviously had us at bay.

"We were on the limit all the way, but we were monitoring it, and we didn't back off at all. We kept the drivers up to date during the race, said the brakes are fine, push."

Williams did a good job, but nevertheless it must be galling to start on pole, with all the advantages that entails, and yet still be beaten by a car that was five places behind on the grid. What on earth do you have to do to beat the red cars?

"Yeah, they did a good job. It's not a matter of thinking you can't beat them. We've beaten Ferrari before, and we'll do it again in the future. What helped them really was that they didn't get held up at certain points, so they could really run flat out. Normally you can't from that position. Obviously with the two Renaults out as well, that helped, because that meant that there was free track. But they did a good job. It didn't really surprise me that they would be there.

"They were just two strong for us at that point. Ralf did a good job, he didn't make any mistakes. We just weren't quick enough. Up to mid-distance on paper he was two seconds in front of Michael, but during that third stint Michael opened up a gap that was too big for us to cover.'

So is this the start of a Williams revival? Certainly for two races, because Indianapolis has similar demands to Montreal, so the low drag FW26 package should be competitive there.

"The main thing is you shift to a different efficiency level of the car - you shift to a different lift to drag ratio. So that means the car works differently on this circuit to what it does at a high downforce track like Nurburgring. There are two races in a row, this one and Indy, where if the car is strong we need to capitalise it.

"It changes everything, it changes the set-up, and where the ride heights are. There are no high speed corners here, it's all slow speed corners and straights, so it's all about braking and traction."

As to what happens after that, everything depends on what developments are in the pipeline. Williams was dominant at Magny-Cours last year, and it will be interesting to see what level the team is at this year, as that will provide a clear sign of where the team has gone in the last 12 month.

"We're bringing in improvements all the time. Here we had a couple of developments bits as well, and we'll probably bring a couple of things to Indy. We'll bring things along as every race goes by. There are some parts on the car that we might change which physically look large, but in terms of aero steps they're no different from changing a front wing endplate, or changing a rear wing. We don't have a B-spec car or anything like that coming out. We're staying with this chassis, and developing it through the year."