British Grand Prix - qualifying
BEST COMBINED QUALIFYING FOR HONDA SO FAR Trulli and Frentzen qualify fourth and fifth for British Grand Prix Jarno Trulli and Heinz-Harald Frentzen took their Benson and Hedges Jordan Hondas to fourth and fifth grid positions respectively in qualifying to record Honda's best overall qualifying performance so far this season. Olivier Panis and Jacques Villeneuve qualified their Lucky Strike BAR Hondas in 11th and 12th respectively. Michael Schumacher took pole position, seeing off the threat of the McLarens of Mika Hakkinen and David Coulthard, who qualified second and third respectively, a whisker of three-thousandths of a second ahead of Trulli, himself two-tenths in front of his Jordan Honda team-mate. Frentzen's effort was good enough to keep the Ferrari of Rubens Barrichello at bay, who will line up alongside him on the third row of tomorrow's grid. The BAR Hondas of Oliver Panis and Jacques Villeneuve experienced several problems that upset their qualifying rhythm. They will start the British Grand Prix from the sixth row, separated by just sixth tenths of a second. Jarno Trulli Position: 4th "This really is a great result for me and the team, especially with our cars starting from the second and third rows of the grid. The car was running very well but it was quite difficult for me to judge my performance as I was completely unaware of my lap times due to the FIA's timing system failure, which didn't record some of my times. My lap time improved with each run and my last outing was proving to be a very fast lap, but unfortunately my car's front suspension broke after I ran over the kerb on the exit at Becketts so I had to stop on the circuit. It's a great shame as I believe I could have finished ahead of Coulthard for third place as I had more to give and the car was performing brilliantly." Kazutoshi Nishizawa - Technical Director, Honda Racing Development "Obviously I'm pretty happy for the two Jordan Honda cars. Jacques had some minor electrical problems that resulted in the loss of one attack lap and upset his qualifying rhythm. However, our aim is to collect as many valuable championship points as possible tomorrow." Eddie Jordan, Chief Executive, Jordan Honda "This is a great day for Jordan and both Heinz and Jarno put in a tremendous effort today. We had silently hopeful expectations after this morning's practice session but I think everybody was expecting us to perform better in the wet than in the dry, so it's nice to prove people wrong sometimes. This result, our best combined qualifying result this year, is a good morale boost for the team, especially coming on the back of our two-car and points finish in France which shows the teams is making good headway. It was frustrating not to have the times up on the screens as we weren't exactly sure where we were for most of the session and, although we had times from our telemetry, until it was official we couldn't be certain. Fourth and fifth, in front of one of the Ferrari's and both Williams is good progress and a very satisfying achievement in front of our home crowd." Malcolm Oastler, Technical Director, BAR Honda "We were much slower than we would have liked today. We had a fairly trouble-free run with Olivier and no problems with traffic. He put in two identical lap times and that's as fast as we could go today. Jacques had a minor engine problem with his race car on his first run so he jumped into the T-car. We did another run in the race car again when the problem was fixed but he wasn't happy with the car and preferred the way the T-car was running. So, jumping between the two cars prevented us from making the sort of progress we should have made through the session." Today's results 1. M.SCHUMACHER Ferrari 1m20.447s 2. HAKKINEN McLaren Mercedes 1m20.529s 3. COULTHARD McLaren Mercedes 1m20.927s 4. TRULLI Jordan Honda 1m20.930s 5. FRENTZEN Jordan Honda 1m21.217s 6. BARRICHELLO Ferrari 1m21.715s 7. RAIKKONEN Sauber Petronas 1m22.023s 8. MONTOYA Williams BMW 1m22.219s 9. HEIDFELD Sauber Petronas 1m22.223s 10. R.SCHUMACHER Williams BMW 1m22.283s 11. PANIS BAR Honda 1m22.316s 12. VILLENEUVE BAR Honda 1m22.916s -------------------------------------------------------------- Honda Formula 1 Press Office, 19 Heathmans Road, London, SW6 4TJ, UK Tel: +44 (0)20 7384 2133 Fax: +44 (0)20 7384 1238