Hungarian GP: BAR Saturday notes

The weather remained warm and sunny for today's crucial qualifying session for the 2002 Hungarian Grand Prix in which Lucky Strike B.A.R Honda were unable to secure the top 10 grid positions they had been hoping for. After a difficult afternoon for both Olivier Panis and Jacques Villeneuve, they will line up 12th and 13th respectively tomorrow for one of the most demanding races of the season.

Olivier Panis

"My qualifying session today was frustrating and annoying. We had a car to definitely be in the top 7 and not where we are right now. For the last two days we have had a number of electronic problems and it happened again in qualifying. The frustration is that all weekend, I have been working hard with the team to find the right technical direction but one of the problems still remains and it is difficult to accept. It shows we still have more work to do on the detail of a race weekend before the team can think about competing with the front-runners."

"Nevertheless, I will roll up my sleeves tomorrow and fight hard in order to pick up any opportunity for points. On the other hand, I would like to say that Geoff Willis and his people at the factory have done a good job of improving the car for this weekend and the proof of that was shown in this morning's session. I would at least like to thank them for that."

Jacques Villeneuve

"I'm not happy with 13th because we could have done much better today. We had a mechanical problem this morning, which we only found out about at the end of free practice so we didn't have a set-up ready for qualifying. We had to go with what we had and work on improving it during the session. We salvaged it a little bit but obviously not enough. In the quickest corner Sato slowed me down so I tried to compensate by pushing hard into the next corner and ended up spinning off. The Hungarian Grand Prix is a very physical race; it's very hot and there are only a couple of straight lines so you're mainly driving corners which is very demanding over 77 laps. Generally we've got a tough race ahead of us tomorrow."

David Richards, Team Principal

"The contrast between this morning and this afternoon demonstrated that the team and Honda have made a lot of progress in the fundamental performance of the car, but at the same time, we're not always getting the best out of it when the pressure is really on. From our position on the grid, and the difficulty of passing at this track, we are going to have to rely on the combination of a great strategy and a better level of reliability than the others in the race tomorrow, but we will certainly push hard to pick up some points. On behalf of the whole team, I would like to congratulate our test driver Anthony Davidson on making the grid with Minardi at his first Grand Prix. We are all delighted for him."

Driver/Chassis
Jacques Villeneuve
BAR004/06
Position: 13th
Best lap time: 1:15.583 (11 laps)

Olivier Panis
BAR004/08
Position: 12th
Best lap time: 1:15.556 (11 laps)
T-Car: BAR004/09

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