Stewart Ford Notes 98-08-04

* The Stewart-Ford team will undertake a two-day test at Silverstone on Wednesday August 5th and Thursday August 6th. Rubens Barrichello will be driving on Wednesday and Jos Verstappen will be at the wheel on Thursday. The team plans to test some suspension modifications in an effort to improve the handling of the car for the Hungarian Grand Prix on Sunday, 16th August. MARTIN WHITAKER, FORD EUROPEAN DIRECTOR OF MOTORSPORT: "Hockenheim has always been one of the toughest races on the calendar from a mechanical reliability point of view. So far this weekend things had been looking good for us so it's sad for the whole team to have both drivers stop with a similar problem in the race." RUBENS BARRICHELLO, STEWART-FORD DRIVER: "There's nothing much I can say really. I had to take off some wing to suit my race strategy. I was having a good battle with Herbert and Alesi until the gearbox problem. I felt the car was quite good, I was able to overtake when I needed but I think the best we could have hoped for was a top 10 finish. What happened today shows that we have to do a lot more race distance running to try and get more all-round reliability." PAUL STEWART, MANAGING DIRECTOR: "Not a great race for the team. The telemetry on Rubens' car showed that the gearbox temperature was rising which left us with no choice but to bring him in. It was unfortunate because he was running well at the time particularly on the straights where he was holding his own in the battle with the two Saubers. It was too early to say whether a two-stop strategy would have worked out. We haven't sourced the exact problem on Jos' car but it appears that he suffered transmission trouble." JOS VERSTAPPEN, STEWART-FORD DRIVER: "I'm very disappointed, this is the third race in a row where I haven't finished. I was trying to push the car but I was struggling for traction particularly in the slower sections of the circuit. I made a pretty good start, passing a couple of cars on the first lap. The car worked quite well on the new set of tyres but I was locking the left front which meant I had to go easy on the braking. I don't really know what the problem was in the end. I just lost drive and that was it."