'It's been a pretty good day,' said Trulli. 'I have been working on the race and a little bit on qualifying. Straight away the car felt competitive, with a good balance. We followed the right direction when developing the set-up. I know where we can improve further, so I'm confident for tomorrow. We can already see that it's going to be very competitive near the front of the grid, so I'm not going to make any predictions at this stage! But I'm pretty happy so far.'

Frentzen remained in the bottom quarter of the time sheet for most of the day as he followed a determined plan to work solely on the set-up of the Jordan Mugen Honda for the race, Heinz-Harald resisting the temptation to run in the faster qualifying trim.

'The lap time doesn't mean a thing in comparison to the others,' said Frentzen. 'I had to avoid the attraction of running with low fuel towards the end but I was doing my homework for the race. That was more important for me today. The track was very slippery to start with, but we expected that. There were no problems with the car so, overall, it's been a very constructive day even though the time doesn't necessarily reflect that.'

The two 60-minute practice periods were run in dry
conditions, the ambient temperature climbing slowly from a cool start to 18 degress C at the end of practice. David Coulthard was fastest in both sessions, with Mika Hakkinen making it a McLaren one-two despite losing all of morning practice after his car had stopped on the circuit with fuel pump trouble on his first lap.

Jordan Grand Prix