Williams tell rivals: "Keep your distance!"

The BMW Williams-F1 team proved today in practice that F1 does have a sense of humour. After being shunted up the rear on numerous occasions in 2001 the team decided to display a special message written on their rear wing. It read: "Keep your distance!" (see picture).

The message from the Wantage based team follows four incidents all of which have seen fellow competitors driving into the back of this years FW23.

The first happen in Australia when Jacques Villeneuve collided with Ralf Schumacher - the collision tragically resulting in the death of a marshal - and the second came two weeks later when Ralf was again the victim this time of Brazilian Rubens Barrichello.

If Williams thought things couldn't get any worse in Brazil Barrichello again rammed into the back of Ralf Schumacher effectively put him out of all contention. The worse though came when Juan Montoya was leading - the Colombian had passed Michael Schumacher for the lead and looked set to take his first F1 victory until Jos Verstappen appeared just to misjudge his braking and 'the rest as they say is history'.

Talk in the media this week has focussed on ideas the team might have some sort of 'special braking system' allowing them to brake later than there rivals and thus catching out other drivers. Williams have dismissed such suggestions saying it is more a question of driver error than anything else.