Trulli set his best time on his final flying lap, beating a Williams and a Ferrari.

'I must say that Bridgestone brought very good tyres,' said Trulli. 'They are a major step forward in terms of performance, especially for the race. So, I think I can do a good job tomorrow. The balance of the car was perfect. We worked very well throughout the test and through practice here. Qualifying was tough because of traffic; it was hard to find a clear lap. I also have to apologise to Michael Schumacher because I made a misjudgement. I saw him coming and tried to get out of his way, but I don't think it was enough. We spoke at the end of qualifying and I explained what happened. But, overall, I'm very pleased with our qualifying performance. Everyone on the team did a great job.'

Frentzen made a strong recovery from a difficult morning when he spent much of the two 45-minute sessions in the pits, first with a misfire and then when rectifying something which had come loose in the cockpit.

'After a tremendously unlucky session this morning, when I spent most of the time in the pits and couldn't work on the qualifying set-up, I'm pleased with this result,' said Frentzen. 'We went into qualifying without knowing about how good or bad the balance would be. We just based the
qualifying set-up on theory rather through logical conclusions reached during the morning. So I'm happy with seventh place even if I couldn't improve my lap time because of incidents during the last two runs. On one of them, unfortunately, Olivier Panis was in the way and I don't understand that because he was in on his 'in' lap. I am only a couple of tenths away from Montoya in sixth place and I could maybe have done something about that. Still, seventh is pretty good; more than I thought might be possible at one stage this morning!'

Ralf Schumacher claimed his first pole position ­ and the first for Williams-BMW ­ on his 26th birthday, beating his brother Michael by one hundredth of a second. The McLarens of David Coulthard and Mika Hakkinen were third and fourth fastest, with Trulli and Jordan Honda easily the 'best of the rest'.

'A very exciting qualifying,' said Eddie Jordan. 'Happy Birthday to Ralf, getting his first pole position; I'm happy for him and I'm happy for Jarno and for Heinz. Jarno's last quick lap was a very good, competent effort. Heinz has had a difficult time recently and to come back and fight hard like that and set that time, even though he was baulked by a slower car, was very impressive. Now we've got to translate such an encouraging performance into points at the end of 72 laps tomorrow.'

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Jordan Grand Prix