Nick Heidfeld may not be racing anymore this season with the BMW WilliamsF1 team confirming that their official test driver, Antonio Pizzonia will contest the final two events in Japan and China in the German’s place. Therefore, when he returns to the cockpit it will be when he takes up his new position at the BMW team, but he has warned his multitude of fans not to expect wins straight away.

"I think a win is too high an aim for our first season," he told Autosport magazine. "We will have to see where Sauber finish at the end of this year and then set a target for next year from that. They will probably be eighth this year, so it's unlikely we will be able to win the world championship starting from there."

BMW will take over the Sauber Petronas team at the conclusion of this years championship, however they wont officially take the reigns until January first, 2006 and Heidfeld is confident that as soon as they have found their feet and reorganized things in a way to suit them, more than likely for 2007, then they can expect to see the fruits of their labour.

"We will be looking for the bigger results to come in 2007 and particularly in 2008," he said. "BMW has a very clear goal of wanting to win the world championship. They have a lot of experience and they have taken the world title before as an engine manufacturer, but now the target is to do it as a team. It's not just a question of spending a huge amount of money. I think they have seen other teams do that in recent years without much success and I'm pretty sure they will want to avoid that."