European GP BAR Honda qualifying reports

<pre> 2001 European Grand Prix - Round 9 Nürburgring - 22-23-24 June

QUALIFYING - 23 June Driver Chassis Jacques Villeneuve 003/07 Olivier Panis 003/06 T-Car 003/04

* Morning Practice

Jacques Villeneuve       Car 10 12th 28 laps
Olivier Panis            Car 9 9th 33 laps

Qualifying:

Jacques Villeneuve Position: 11th Best Time: 1:16.439 </pre> "We had improved the car quite a lot before the session and changed the set-up completely, so things went a little better than in practice. Sadly though, someone in front of me went straight into the chicane and I completely missed the corner; I lost two or three tenths just into the corner and that was the best lap. We're much closer in time to the two teams we are usually fighting with in qualifying - Sauber and Jordan ^Ö but we're not within a tenth of pole position so that's very frustrating. But something always happens here so we'll see for the race." <pre> Olivier Panis Position: 13th Best Time: 1:16.872 </pre> "I was quite surprised to find that the car wasn't the same as in practice earlier. This morning I was very happy and I was quite positive for qualifying but many things changed - the temperature and the track. We didn't find the best set-up for qualifying and we aren't very quick. Things are going to be quite difficult for us tomorrow so we need to work hard tonight. You never know what your chances are here - it's a very difficult circuit and it's very easy to make a mistake so we need to make sure the car is stable for us to push harder in the race."

Malcolm Oastler, Technical Director
"Obviously qualifying was not very good for us. We believed we had the potential to do much better than we did today and we just need to find out what we're missing on new tyres. We lost a bit of track time with Jacques this morning after he went off but we managed to get everything dialled in again OK. The chassis balance wasn't that bad but we were lacking overall grip. We're going to have to pull something out of the bag tomorrow that's for sure. The starting positions are going to make life difficult - especially at this stage in the season when all the cars are usually quite reliable. We expect to show better pace in the race tomorrow - as we generally do - but it will still be quite a challenge.

Craig Pollock, Team Principal and Managing Director
"This was a disappointing qualifying position today and much harder than we anticipated. We didn't get what we expected out of the car or the tyres. We are obviously in a difficult position to race from so we just need to work very hard overnight to make sure we give Jacques and Olivier two cars they can really race with and to ensure we have reliability. This is a qualifying session that perhaps we'd like to put behind us for today but not forget about because we obviously need to do some work on our qualifying performance."

-BAR