European GP Friday McLaren notes

Chassis Numbers: Mika Hakkinen: MP4 - 14/04 David Coulthard: MP4 - 14/06 T.Car: MP4 - 14/05

The West McLaren Mercedes team worked through the free practice sessions in order to prepare for Sunday's race. Mika Hakkinen put in the quickest time of the day with a 1:20.758 with his team mate David Coulthard finishing in sixth position having posted a 1:21.461.

MIKA HAKKINEN 'This is an interesting track for a driver as you carry a lot of speed into the corners, but this also means that you have to work hard to get the balance right. Today we have been preparing for the race and concentrating on finding the optimum race configuration for the car. So far everything has gone well and we will continue to focus on improving the car over the weekend.'

DAVID COULTHARD 'As always we have spent today's free practice sessions experimenting in order to find the best set up for the race on Sunday. I found that as the session progressed I was struggling with some over and under steer, but I will be working with the engineers this afternoon to dial that out and find a good balance for qualifying.'

RON DENNIS ' An uneventful practice that inevitably saw the speed of our cars drop as we ran throughout practice on a single set of tyres. The closeness of our competitors reflects the use of new tyres, and of course it is qualifying on Saturday and, more importantly the race on Sunday, that really matters.'

NORBERT HAUG 'A good start to the weekend with Mika being fastest. He is more than half a second quicker than the next fastest competitor who was also using only one set of tyres. I am sure that David will improve tomorrow when the team will concentrate on qualifying.'