Italian GP Arrows Saturday notes

OrangeArrows drivers, Enrique Bernoldi and Jos Verstappen, qualified in 18th and 19th positions respectively for tomorrow's Italian Grand Prix at Monza. Under the first sunny skies of the weekend, the session ran smoothly for the team until a few ...

OrangeArrows drivers, Enrique Bernoldi and Jos Verstappen, qualified in 18th and 19th positions respectively for tomorrow's Italian Grand Prix at Monza.

Under the first sunny skies of the weekend, the session ran smoothly for the team until a few minutes before the end when McLaren's Mika Hakkinen crashed out, causing qualifying to be red-flagged. Both Bernoldi and Verstappen were on the circuit at that time but did not lose out on track time as their lap allocation was adjusted to take the red flag into account.

Enrique Bernoldi
"During my last run in free practice this morning I had a problem with my car so when qualifying began I did not have total confidence so I didn't start as well as I could have done. We made steady progress throughout the session and I have to say I'm pretty happy with the result as we tried our best. We ironed out the oversteer problem I had this morning so I feel a lot happier with the car now and am looking forward to a good day tomorrow."

Jos Verstappen
"I'm pretty happy with the way the car has performed today. This is a power circuit so there are only small things we could do, like experimenting with tyre pressures. We improved the balance of the car a lot during the session so I am quite confident that we will have a good race. Hopefully I will get a good start and then we will see what happens from there."

Graham Taylor, Chief Race Engineer
"Well we had a much better day today than we had in Spa two weeks ago, that's for sure! It was very close between the two drivers but quite a gap to make up to the Honda cars ahead of us on the grid. We've optimised what we have got so it's disappointing that we are slower than we were here last year."