San Marino GP Saturday Jordan notes

Imola, San Marino, 2nd May 1999 Circuit Length 5.03/3.13 Total 308.196 Kms

JORDAN GRAND PRIX ON FOURTH ROW OF THE GRID

Qualifying for the San Marino Grand Prix was disappointing for the Benson and Hedges Jordan team. Heinz-Harald Frentzen and Damon Hill had hoped to place themselves higher than 7th and 8th places (respectively), but a broken push rod on Frentzen's car, which forced him to abort his third run, and a mistake by Hill on his final lap, meant the third row of the grid eluded both drivers. However Frenzten and Hill were happy with their cars and are confident of a good race tomorrow.

McLaren swept the board again, with Mika Hakkinen taking his 13th pole of his career. Michael Schumacher had to content himself with third place, disappointing the Italian Ferrari crowd. "I am disappointed with myself because I never did a good lap, " said Schumacher. "The car is nearly perfect."

The surprise of the day was Jacques Villeneuve, who posted the fifth fasted time of the day in his BAR car. "It' s been a long time since I have had such a good qualifying lap," said the former World Champion.

Frentzen, commenting on today's performance said, "I think it would have been possible to go quicker as the car felt very good but we had a small technical problem which interrupted the session. I had a broken pushrod on my third run and so I lost a set of tyres. Things like this happen though, and our position on the grid is not bad. The car feels good and I am not concerned about tomorrow - I think we can do well."

Damon commented,"The balance of the car was good, but I made a mess of my last run so spoilt any chance of being higher up the grid. It was very close and although we had hoped to do better than this, I am still optimistic we can do well in the race. Our race performance has been stronger than qualifying performance and the reliability and race set up of the car are good."