Brazilian GP Friday Jordan notes

McLaren and Ferrari led the field on a wet and miserable day at the Interlagos circuit in Sao Paulo, Brazil on Friday's free practice sessions. Mika Hakkinen was top of the chart with his team mate closely behind. Michael Schumacher and Eddie Irvine were hot on their tails.

Heinz-Harald Frentzen hinted that the Jordan Mugen-Honda 199 might prove competitive once again this weekend, but both he and Damon Hill were hampered by an oil system problem which drastically restricted their number of laps. Heinz was the more fortunate of the two, managing to complete the whole first session and the majority of the second. His best time placed him eighth. Commenting after the session Heinz said, "My initial impressions are that the balance of the car is good. The set up we had seemed to work well until we had a problem which forced both Damon and myself to stop running. This stopped us from gaining more experience on the track under the different wet and dry conditions, which is frustrating, but I am still feeling confident about what we can achieve here once we sort the problem out."

Damon was less lucky, spending most of the day watching from the pit wall. "It is going to be difficult for me tomorrow because I did not do a single lap in the dry today," he said. "So I might do better if it is wet tomorrow! We were unlucky with circumstances today and we will have to work hard to sort things out for tomorrow. If the weather is as mixed as it was today it will be a real lottery in qualifying as there are only very short periods when it is dry."

In briefing meetings after the sessions, and after analysis of the telemetry data, the Jordan engineers felt they had identified and rectified the problem.

Forecasts for qualifying are for a 90% chance of rain.

The spare car will be set up for Heinz-Harald for the Saturday qualifying session.