European Grand Prix - free practice
TRULLI HEADS HONDA FOURSOME Jarno fastest of Honda-powered quartet at Nürburgring Jarno Trulli was the fastest of the four Honda-powered drivers in today's free practice for the European Grand Prix at the Nürburgring, Germany. The Benson and Hedges Jordan Honda driver finished the two sessions seventh fastest overall, while the Lucky Strike BAR Honda pairing of Olivier Panis and Jacques Villeneuve were 10th and 12th respectively. Jordan Honda's Heinz-Harald Frentzen endured a difficult day after he lost most of his track time having spun off to end the session 19th overall. The pace was set by the McLarens of Mika Hakkinen and David Coulthard, pursued by Ralf Schumacher in his Williams and the Ferrari of his brother Michael. The second Ferrari and Williams, of Rubens Barrichello and Juan Pablo Montoya respectively, were fifth and sixth fastest. Jarno Trulli Position: 7th "I am quite happy with the car's consistency and the work we have achieved today by running through the race set-up programme. During the first session the car felt well-balanced and, although we tried some further adjustments in the second hour, we couldn't find any significant improvements to fine-tune the balance. We will analyse the data this afternoon and plan our direction for tomorrow, as there is still some work to do. We looked competitive from the first outing this morning, which is usually a good sign, although we'll have to wait until tomorrow to be sure." Kazutoshi Nishizawa - Technical Director, Honda Racing Development "No problems from an engine point of view. We finished our Friday programme successfully and we will be working on our qualifying set-ups tomorrow." Tim Holloway, Head of Engineering, Jordan Honda "It was a mixed day. Jarno worked through a very good proportion of the work in preparation for the race and is looking in good shape. Heinz lost most of the second session when he spun off at the last corner, which makes things quite difficult for him now with an increased workload tomorrow. Both cars are running well and it was a relatively trouble-free practice session from a technical viewpoint." Craig Pollock, Team Principal and Managing Director, BAR Honda "We've had a much better start to the race weekend than we had in Canada so everything is looking positive so far. We were all very heartened to hear that both Jacques and Olivier are relatively comfortable with the car at this stage and they feel the new aero package is making a real difference. We do still have quite a lot of work to do on the car overnight in order to get the extra performance required for a strong race and result but, all in all, there are no major headaches. We've made a very good start and look forward to continuing the weekend that way." Today's results 1 HAKKINEN McLaren Mercedes 1m16.408s 2 COULTHARD McLaren Mercedes 1m16.579s 3 R.SCHUMACHER Williams BMW 1m17.355s 4 M.SCHUMACHER Ferrari 1m17.507s 5 BARRICHELLO Ferrari 1m17.665s 6 MONTOYA Williams BMW 1m17.737s 7 TRULLI Jordan Honda 1m18.133s 10 PANIS BAR Honda 1m18.410s 12 VILLENEUVE BAR Honda 1m18.434s 19 FRENTZEN Jordan Honda 1m19.988s -------------------------------------------------------------- Honda Formula 1 Press Office, 19 Heathmans Road, London, SW6 4TJ, UK Tel: +44 (0)20 7384 2133 Fax: +44 (0)20 7384 1238