“I did a very good first run,” remarked the Italian driver who has scored points in his last 3 races. “Then I had a drop off in performance which we need to investigate. I couldn't improve my lap times, which was a shame because, otherwise, the car was running very well. We had found quite a good balance for qualifying and, right from the beginning, the car was quick. So it's a shame I couldn't go quicker but, after the problems this morning, I'm pretty happy.”

Heinz-Harald Frentzen was happy with the way his car was performing in the morning practice sessions, however things began to go wrong during his first qualifying run when he was forced to abandon the lap after he accidentally hit the pit lane speed limiter! He ended the session more than eight tenths of a second behind his team mate having had problems with traffic on his last run The German driver is extremely disappointed that he will be starting tomorrows Austrian Grand Prix from eleventh on the grid.

“I had to abandon my first quick lap when I made a mistake and accidentally hit the pit lane speed-limiter!” said Frentzen. “I set what would turn out to be my best lap on my second run but I was struggling with the car. The balance was not as good as it had been in the morning and we couldn't improve it. On top of that, I had traffic problems and, because of the way the laps had worked out, I was carrying a bit more fuel than I needed, so the extra weight didn't help either. All in all, I'm obviously disappointed to be this far back on the grid.”

“Jarno did a very good first lap,” explained Tim Holloway, head of engineering. “But, from then on, he was affected by a lack of power and we need to analyse that further. Heinz had a difficult qualifying in the sense that he didn't get a single decent run. He had to abort two runs and the run he did get was not a good lap.”