Jarno Trulli, who had very little running in the morning, was pleased to be in the top six while Heinz-Harald Frentzen had to start from scratch during qualifying after crashing during the morning and losing important set-up time.

'It was such a disappointing morning,' said Trulli. 'It was very hard to find the problem and that meant I couldn't do much work for qualifying. It actually worked out very well in the end because the car was well balanced. The whole team did a fantastic job and, even though the car wasn't quite there, it is a very good result being ahead of teams such as Williams and Benetton.'

Frentzen did not get the chance to make comparisons between the different tyres available and effectively had to use the first few laps of qualifying as a test.

'We were trying different set-ups,' said Frentzen. 'The last lap was perfect until the final corner, where I had to back off and lose about four-tenths of a second because of a slower car. Considering what we have been through today, eighth isn't too bad but, obviously, I feel that things
could have been much better.'

Ferrari turned the tables on McLaren when Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello delighted the home crowd by putting the red cars on the front row. Mika Hakkinen was third fastest despite losing time with an engine misfire on his last run. Jacques Villeneuve grabbed fourth place for BAR after David Coulthard could not find a clear lap on his way to fifth fastest time.

Jordan Grand Prix