Michael Schumacher totally dominated qualifying for tomorrow's Japanese Grand Prix, putting his Ferrari on pole position with a lap time of 1m32.484s - a full 0.7s faster than his nearest rival, Juan Pablo Montoya in his Williams. The Benson and Hedges Jordan Honda pairing of Jarno Trulli and Jean Alesi qualifying 8th and 11th respectively, neither able to better times set early on in the session.

Behind front row men Schumacher and Montoya came the second Williams of Ralf Schumacher, Rubens Barrichello's Ferrari and then the McLaren pairing of Hakkinen and Coulthard split by Giancarlo Fisichella's Benetton which produced an impressive 6th best time.

Importantly for Jordan qualifying has placed Trulli well in front of the team's major rivals in the battle for the Constructors Championship, the Sauber's lining up 8th and 10th and the BAR Hondas 14th and 17th.

Trulli, though, was slightly disappointed with the result, his sector times suggesting that he could have been even better placed. "Today's result was a little disappointing as the car felt very good and I think I could have been in sixth position if I had not been held up by traffic on my fastest lap (second outing). Unfortunately, however, I lost a lot of time in the second section on that run, and then I was not able to improve the time on the final two outings. Nevertheless, it was not a bad result and I feel I got the best out of the car."

Jean Alesi was reasonably happy at the end of qualifying, although had hoped for more. "I enjoyed it out there today although of course I would have rather finished my last qualifying higher up the grid as 11th is not a great result for the team. I feel I got the best I could out of the car, but I just couldn't get past the 1.34.4 time, despite hard work with David Brown, my race engineer, to see how we could find some improvements to the lap time. There were no problems though, and I enjoyed the session very much. I am very much looking forward to tomorrow's race, a little more than usual of course!"