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Formula One: Stewart-Ford Racing News, European Grand Prix

25 September 1999

Rubens Barrichello finished seventh in today's Free Practice for Sunday's European Grand Prix. Johnny Herbert was 13th fastest.

RUBENS BARRICHELLO Car No.16 (SF3-04)

Time: 1:21.505 Position: 7th 34 laps

Where do you need to find improvement for tomorrow?

'So far it's not looking too bad but we definitely have to find more speed for qualifying. The car was a little inconsistent. We started the day well but we seemed to get a little confused on set-up. I was able to use the kerbs as I wanted this morning but the car became unstable as the session went on. It's so important to be able to attack the kerbs here so that's something we need to work on tonight.'

JOHNNY HERBERT Car No.17 (SF3-05)

Time: 1:21.982 Position: 13th 39 laps

What programme did you focus on today?

'We did a lot of work on race set-up and the car feels reasonably good on heavy fuel. I was struggling with understeer which is always the case here so I wasn't able to attack as much I would have liked. Obviously we need to dial out much of that understeer for qualifying tomorrow. I'm not too disheartened over my position today.'

PAUL STEWART, Stewart-Ford Chief Operating Officer

'We didn't make the progress we had hoped for today. We evaluated both sets of tyres to try and get a direction for tomorrow but there's some work to be done yet on our best set-up option for qualifying. We need to get back on the pace we had at the start of practice today.'

MARTIN WHITAKER, Director, Ford Racing, Europe

'We had a trouble-free day with the Series 3 engines during which we continued our work on optimising the engine for the circuit lay out and we are satisfied with the progress made so far.'