Formula One: BAR Honda records best qualifying position
6 May 2000
FIA Formula 1 World Championship - Round 5 Spanish Grand Prix, Barcelona - Qualifying BAR HONDA RECORDS BEST QUALIFYING POSITION AS VILLENEUVE CLAIMS SIXTH Saturday 6 May 2000 Lucky Strike Reynard BAR Honda recorded its best qualifying result of the year in Barcelona this afternoon as Jacques Villeneuve claimed a place on the third row of the grid for Sunday's Spanish Grand Prix. The Canadian's sixth place represents Bar's highest starting position since early last year and gives the Honda-powered team an excellent chance of adding further points to this season's tally, having already secured three top six finishes in four races. Villeneuve set his sixth place time with five minutes of the hour remaining, timing his final qualifying run to perfection. Avoiding the customary problems of yellow flags and traffic at the end of the session, Villeneuve was able to find the fractions of a second that lifted him to sixth on the grid, while others were unable to improve their times. BAR Honda team mate Ricardo Zonta made progress this afternoon to find a better balance on his car, but the closeness of the times in the midfield saw thirteen drivers separated by just a second and Ricardo will be relying on his traditionally strong race pace to secure a good finish tomorrow. Jacques Villeneuve Position: 6th 1min 21.963sec "I am very happy with sixth place. It felt good, like fighting for pole position. We went out a bit earlier than normal for the last run and it came off. We have used a different set-up this weekend and it seems to have worked well for us, because we are only a second off the leaders, so we have progressed by maybe half a second. Another good start could be really useful tomorrow because we are near the front of the grid." Ricardo Zonta Position: 17th 1min 22.882sec "We were actually starting to make some good progress towards the end of the qualifying session. There is only one second covering sixth to 19th places today and if you're not completely happy with the set-up, you're not going to perform to the maximum. I hope I can race better tomorrow than I qualified." Takefumi Hosaka - Managing Director, Honda R&D "After yesterday's hard going, we returned to a more conventional setting today and made good progress with Jacques' car, but it was a shame that we could not get it right for Ricardo before the end of the session. We are beginning to see that if we get the car set up right we can get to a certain level of performance, but we need to get the direction clearer more quickly. As for tomorrow, because the circuit is tough on tyres and fuel consumption we need to have a good race strategy." Jarno Trulli and Heinz-Harald Frentzen will start tomorrow's race alongside each other, after the Jordan Mugen Honda team claimed the fourth row of the grid. For the first time this season, however, it was Trulli who set the faster time, out-qualifying his more experienced team mate to take seventh position.