European Grand Prix - qualifying
SIDE BY SIDE Jordan Hondas share row four of grid Jarno Trulli and Heinz-Harald Frentzen will start the European Grand Prix from row four of the grid tomorrow after they qualified their Benson and Hedges Jordan Hondas in seventh and eighth positions respectively, while the Lucky Strike BAR Honda drivers Jacques Villeneuve and Olivier Panis qualified 11th and 13th. Pole position was reserved by Ferrari's Michael Schumacher, who is joined on the front row of the grid once again by his younger brother, Ralf, fresh from his win at the Canadian Grand Prix. His Williams team-mate, Juan Pablo Montoya, will start from third spot tomorrow alongside the second Ferrari of Rubens Barrichello. The pair of Jordan Hondas will line up behind the McLarens of David Coulthard and Mika Hakkinen, who occupy the third row. Villeneuve's BAR Honda was eclipsed by only one-thousandth of a second by Nick Heidfeld, himself only three-hundredths off his Sauber team-mate Kimi Raikkonen in a close session. Panis' final attempt and a potential improvement, was scuppered by yellow flags when David Coulthard slid off at the final corner, as he and the majority of the field were on a last-ditch hot lap in the closing minutes. Jarno Trulli Position: 7th "After this morning's practice, I predicted we could be in seventh and eighth behind the top three teams, so I'm happy that my qualifying position is the least I had hoped for. It was a very difficult qualifying though, with a lot of cars out at the same time putting dust on the track, so I had to abort my last two runs because of traffic and also a yellow flag. I could have improved my lap time as there was more potential in the car, but I did the best I could given the situation on the track. The car feels good but I think it will be a tough race." Kazutoshi Nishizawa - Technical Director, Honda Racing Development "A mediocre performance overall. We had expected more but there is potential for improvement in the race and we aim to finish in the points. However, there will need to be a lot of homework tonight to ensure we are well-prepared for tomorrow on all fronts." Eddie Jordan, Chief Executive, Jordan Honda "Jarno and Heinz both gave strong performances today, qualifying very well. It was good to see Heinz back on form and he did a good job, especially considering the little running time he has had in the car over the last month. Jarno produced another solid qualifying result. With the emergence of Williams, fourth is a good position for us at the moment and we're eager to finish in the points tomorrow." Craig Pollock, Team Principal and Managing Director, BAR Honda "This was a very disappointing qualifying position today and much harder than we anticipated. We didn't get what we expected out of the car or the tyres. We are obviously in a difficult position to race from so we just need to work very hard overnight to make sure we give Jacques and Olivier two cars they can race with and to ensure we have reliability. This is a qualifying session that perhaps we'd like to put behind us for today but not forget about because obviously need to do some work on our qualifying performance." Today's results Pole M.SCHUMACHER Ferrari 1m14.960s 2 R.SCHUMACHER Williams BMW 1m15.226s 3 MONTOYA Williams BMW 1m15.490s 4 BARRICHELLO Ferrari 1m15.622s 5 COULTHARD McLaren Mercedes 1m15.717s 6 HAKKINEN McLaren Mercedes 1m15.776s 7 TRULLI Jordan Honda 1m16.138s 8 FRENTZEN Jordan Honda 1m16.376s 11 VILLENEUVE BAR Honda 1m16.439s 13 PANIS BAR Honda 1m16.872s -------------------------------------------------------------- Honda Formula 1 Press Office, 19 Heathmans Road, London, SW6 4TJ, UK Tel: +44 (0)20 7384 2133 Fax: +44 (0)20 7384 1238