Heinz-Harald Frentzen and Jordan Grand Prix fulfilled the promise shown during practice by qualifying fourth fastest for the Australian Grand Prix.

Jarno Trulli was less happy, having struggled with a handling problem to claim seventh place on the grid.

"Finally, the cat is out of the bag!" grinned Frentzen, when referring to the promise which he had known was in the car from the moment he had first driven it in January. "I have been very careful when talking about the performance of the car, trying not to give too much away. But this is by far the best Jordan I have ever driven. We have shown we are very competitive but the race is going to be the true test, particularly of our reliability. But, for now, I am very happy with today's performance!"

Trulli immediately went into a lengthy debrief with his engineer Gabriele Delli Colli in a bid to discover why the handling of his car had not been as good as during the morning, when he was fifth fastest, marginally slower than Frentzen.

"We are trying to understand what happened," said Trulli. "We were slow compared to this morning, the car was behaving differently during qualifying and we have to find out why that was. Obviously, I am disappointed with my time."

Eddie Jordan, the Chief Executive of Benson and Hedges Jordan Honda, said he was encouraged by the team's performance so far. "This is the first time we have run as a complete race team this year in full qualifying trim and we have worked very well," said Jordan. "Overall, it has been a very solid performance. I am very happy with the number of laps we have done during the past two days, the cars showing good, honest reliability.

"Unfortunately, Jarno didn't get the best out of his car this afternoon but Heinz-Harald was right up there. We hope to improve even further."

The Ferraris of Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello were fastest.

Mika Hakkinen was third quickest despite being in the middle of what would have been an even faster lap when qualifying was stopped. The McLaren driver was forced to abort the lap thanks to Luciano Burti crashing his Jaguar without injury to the Brazilian driver.

Bridgestone teams held the top four places, Ralf Schumacher being the fastest Michelin runner when he claimed fifth place for Williams. David Coulthard was sixth fastest, having run over a kerb on his first lap and then also having to abort a quick lap thanks to the red flag after Burti's accident.