Williams bullish over Interlagos chances

Although Juan Pablo Montoya threw away a potential victory in the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, Williams has failed to win since last year's Malaysian event. But the Grove-based team believes it made a major breakthrough in last week's test at Barcelona, when its cars topped three of the four days of running.

Speaking in this week's AUTOSPORT magazine, chief operations engineer Sam Michael said: "We are definitely more confident as a team. Williams is normally quite cautious and we would like to go in quietly rather than say, 'Yeah, we are going to do it'. We think we have taken a good step, but let's see how it turns out in the race, because testing and racing are different things."

Montoya has echoed that sentiment by predicting that reigning world champion Michael Schumacher, who has failed to feature on the podium in each of the first two races of 2003, won't win on Sunday.

"He [Schumacher] has chances but I don't think the chances of him winning here in Brazil are very big," said Montoya. "From what we've seen in the first two races, the Michelin tyres are working much better than the Bridgestones. I think they can give us a bit of an advantage on this circuit."