Frentzen takes points home for Jordan Honda

Honda-powered cars finished the Australian Grand Prix in points scoring positions after solid race performances from the Honda quartet signalled promise for the 2001 season. Olivier Panis headed the Honda stable home on the track in his Lucky Strike Reynard BAR Honda with a fine drive to fourth place from 9th on the grid but was subsequently penalised 25 seconds from his finishing time for overtaking under yellow flags, demoting him to seventh place. Benson & Hedges Jordan Honda's Heinz-Harald Frentzen finished sixth on the track (moved up to fifth in the re-ordered finishing positions) after a typically committed drive, having been pushed down to 16th from 3rd following a clash with Rubens Barrichello. Despite strong showings their respective team-mates were unfortunate not to finish the race, Jordan Honda's Jarno Trulli due to a technical problem and BAR Honda's Jacques Villeneuve because of an accident.

The race began positively for all of the Honda-supported drivers but particularly for Heinz-Harald Frentzen who made the most of his second row start position to move up to third at the first corner while his team-mate Jarno Trulli also pushed up a place on the opening lap. Michael Schumacher converted his pole position into a controlled lead from Mika Hakkinen's McLaren, pursued by Frentzen, Rubens Barrichello in the second Ferrari, McLaren's David Coulthard, Trulli and Ralf Schumacher in the Williams-BMW. What looked to be a promising race for Heinz-Harald then took a turn for the worse on lap three as Rubens Barrichello attacked the Jordan Honda. The two cars made contact, with Heinz-Harald coming off the worse and recovering from an off-track excursion into 16th place, from where he began a gritty climb back up the field.

Two laps later, Jacques Villeneuve's race came to a premature end as he collided with Ralf Schumacher's Williams-BMW, sending the BAR Honda airborne and into the trackside wall.

The safety car was immediately deployed and the field lined up astern, with Trulli and Panis running in fifth and sixth places and Frentzen already up to 13th place. It was lap 15 before the track was ready for the race to be continued and at the restart Frentzen got straight down to business, climbing to 11th and then 9th positions over the next 10 laps. With Schumacher controlling the lead to Hakkinen the race seemed to settle down until on lap 25 Hakkinen's McLaren crashed into a tyre barrier, ending his challenge and promoting Barrichello, Coulthard, Trulli and Panis to second, third, fourth and fifth positions respectively. Seven laps later Panis moved up to fourth as Trulli's engine began to lose power, which resulted in the Italian driver's retirement from the race.

On the next lap Coulthard passed Barrichello into second but Schumacher's Ferrari was by now established in a commanding lead which was never really threatened, even through the session of pitstops which then followed. Virtually all the teams elected to switch to a one-stop strategy following the prolonged period behind the safety car and as the race order shakeout took place at the end of the pitstops, Schumacher had victory in sight.

Frentzen at this point had achieved 6th place and despite running within half a second of the tail of Nick Heidfeld's Sauber for the last 10 laps and using his best efforts to force a mistake out of his compatriot, he was unable to find a way past and had to settle for sixth.

Kazutoshi Nishizawa - Technical Director, Honda Racing Development "Firstly, both the reliability and the performance of the engines and the teams was generally good but there is a lot of work to do. Although I'm sorry for Olivier, Heinz drove a very good race to come back from 16th and finish fifth."

Tadasu Takahashi - Engine Engineer, BAR Honda "I feel relieved to have finished in the first race. Jacques and his car were in good shape so it was unfortunate for him not to finish. Both engines performed fine and overall I feel that the package all round is better."

Hiroshi Shirai - Engine Engineer, Jordan Honda "Overall I am quite happy with our performance but with mixed feelings. Our competitiveness is good and Jordan and Honda are working well together, however it was disappointing to be running third and get put down to 16th but it was a great fight-back by Heinz-Harald. As for Jarno, he started having a misfire but we are not sure what caused it yet but of course we are taking steps to find out and get a counter-measure in place for Malaysia."

Race Results

1 Michael Schumacher Ferrari 2 David Coulthard McLaren Mercedes 3 Rubens Barrichello Ferrari 4 Nick Heidfeld Sauber 5 Heinz-Harald Frentzen Jordan Honda 6 Kimi Raikkonen Sauber

Championship Standings (after 1 of 17 rounds)

DRIVERS' 1 M Schumacher Ferrari 10 2 Coulthard McLaren 6 3 Barrichello Ferrari 4 4 Heidfeld Sauber 3 5 Frentzen Jordan Honda 2 6 Raikkonen Sauber 1

CONSTRUCTORS' 1 Ferrari 14 2 McLaren-Mercedes 6 3 BAR Honda 3 4 Sauber 4 5 Jordan Honda 2

Round two of the FIA Formula One World Championship is the Malaysian Grand Prix on Sunday 18th March.