Formula One: Villeneuve claims seventh for Bar Honda at Magny-Cours
2 July 2000
FIA Formula 1 World Championship - Round 9 French Grand Prix, Magny-Cours Saturday Qualifying VILLENEUVE CLAIMS SEVENTH FOR BAR HONDA IN MAGNY-COURS QUALIFYING Saturday 1 July 2000 Jacques Villeneuve produced a great performance in Magny-Cours this afternoon, qualifying his Lucky Strike Reynard BAR Honda on the fourth row of the grid for tomorrow's French Grand Prix. The Canadian's best time was set when only 30 minutes of the one hour session had elapsed, putting him at that time in fifth position. The rising heat, which saw the track temperature climb to around 40 degrees, prevented further improvement on his two subsequent runs and Villeneuve finished in seventh place. With a history of great starts so far this season and a Honda-powered car that again posted speed trap readings among the fastest of the day, Villeneuve is confident of a good race tomorrow and the prospect of adding to his world championship points tally. Ricardo Zonta had a less fortunate qualifying hour. Forced to take the spare car, the Brazilian missed the first half hour of track activity. He recovered well, improving his lap time on both qualifying runs and although he was not able to rise higher than 19th place, Ricardo was just half a second off a top ten starting position. Jacques Villeneuve Position: 7th 1min 16.653sec "I'm pretty happy as the car performed better than I thought it might. I think seventh is as good a qualifying position as we could have hoped for and we got as much as we possibly could out of the car. I will try for another good start tomorrow as in the previous races and we will hopefully be able to score points in the race." Ricardo Zonta Position: 19th 1min 17.668sec "It just didn't work out for me today. I lost my race car at the second corner of the first lap and had to run back to take the spare. We couldn't get it balanced well enough around the whole circuit, so I couldn't deliver the kind of lap time I know I can do round here." Takefumi Hosaka - Managing Director, Honda R&D "From yesterday we have worked hard to improve the settings on the car and with Jacques' effort we were able to achieve seventh position. Unfortunately, Ricardo's engine failed on his first lap and he had to take the spare car. We do not yet know the cause of the problem but we will investigate this today." Jordan confirmed the potential of its Mugen-Honda powered package this afternoon, Heinz-Harald Frentzen taking eighth place for tomorrow's race, immediately ahead of team mate Jarno Trulli in ninth position.