French GP Saturday Jordan notes

Heinz-Harald Frentzen and Jarno Trulli will start the French Grand Prix from eighth and ninth places for Jordan Grand Prix at Magny-Cours.

As predicted, qualifying was a very close contest with fifth to 13th quickest covered by less than a second. Pole position went to Michael Schumacher and Ferrari with David Coulthard second fastest for McLaren.

'We knew qualifying was going to be very tight, and so it proved,' said Mike Gascoyne, technical director at Jordan Grand Prix. 'With the temperatures having risen during the day, you needed to put everything together - and we never did. Looking at the various sector times, we were as quick as anyone from fifth place down but neither driver got a complete lap together and others benefited from that.

'In these conditions, you are always struggling to get the maximum. If the balance of the car is not right then it is easy to make small mistakes - which both drivers did, unfortunately. Its very close, so we will have to see what the race brings. Rain has been forecast - so that could make things very interesting!'

Frentzen was a couple of tenths away from fifth place with Trulli just one thousandth of a second behind his team mate.

'It's a shame we couldn't do better,' said Jarno. 'The car was okay but it was very tough. I made a slight mistake on my last run and that was it.'

Schumacher was unchallenged for pole after an engine change forced Coulthard to use the spare McLaren which was set up for Mika Hakkinen. Coulthard finally got his own car back for one last run but the set-up wasnt quite right and he missed pole by a tenth of a second.