Spanish GP: BAR Saturday notes

After the positive start made in Free Practice yesterday, today's qualifying session proved a little more frustrating for Olivier Panis and Jacques Villeneuve who qualified 13th and 16th respectively. Two compromised runs cost Olivier a better set-up while Jacques was still unable to find the optimum balance for tomorrow's Spanish Grand Prix.

Olivier Panis

"I'm obviously disappointed with 13th position because it doesn't reflect all the good work done by the team over the weekend. I lost two of my four runs because of track incidents and the red flag, and losing so much track time didn't help me to find a better set-up. Having said that, I think we're definitely still moving in the right direction and I certainly feel much better with the car here. As ever, warm-up is going to be very important to prepare for the race, but I'm sure that if we can get back to where we were on Friday, we can expect a better race than I've had so far."

Jacques Villeneuve

"This has always been a good track for me and generally we've been quite competitive here, so I'm disappointed to have qualified 16th. We haven't been able to get my car working well all weekend. I seem to be running better on old tyres and Olivier seems to be better off on new. The engine has helped us a little bit but we've been struggling with a lack of grip in general. I'm not surprised to be worse off than Imola because we knew Spain would be tougher. 16th is a little worse than we expected though. I'm sure we'll be better off in the race tomorrow but we'll be relying on opportunities."

David Richards, Team Principal

"Our qualifying positions in Imola reflect our current expectations so 13th and 16th is less than we'd hoped for here. We've been concentrating very much on reliability over the past few races so that we're in the best possible shape to bring performance into the car later on. For now, we are looking to make the most of every opportunity during the race."

Driver/Chassis
Jacques Villeneuve
BAR004/06
Position: 16th
Best time: 1:18.847 (12 laps)

Olivier Panis
BAR004/04
Position: 13th
Best time: 1:18.472 (12 laps)

T-Car
BAR004/03

Temperatures
Track: 20-21 C
Air: 20-21 C

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