Formula 1

Villeneuve excited by new qualifying

Jacques Villeneuve is excited at the prospect of the new qualifying system and thinks it will be a lot of fun. Instead of the previous format, drivers will now only have a single fast lap to set a qualifying time -- this leaves no room for mistakes ...

Published: Jan 31, 2003, 6:59 PM

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Jacques Villeneuve is excited at the prospect of the new qualifying system and thinks it will be a lot of fun. Instead of the previous format, drivers will now only have a single fast lap to set a qualifying time -- this leaves no room for mistakes and most believe the new set up, like it or not, will bring about a few surprises on the grid.

Jacques Villeneuve.

Photo by British American Racing.

"One lap qualifying is going to be fantastic," Villeneuve told the BAR website enthusiastically. "It's really exciting. It's quite a daunting prospect because you have to do a very fast lap, but you're not allowed to make a mistake because you only have one go at it. It really is balls out, too!"

"The way qualifying worked before was you did some low fuel running but you still had a few runs to get used to it and get the set-up right. Now you'll just do your massage, get in the car and go for it. Bang! Banzai! It will be like downhill skiing -- just one run. No practice, you will just go straight into your one run."

"It's going to be great and a lot of fun. Before you could do the first run without taking too many risks, just to make sure you got one in. Now you have to go for it and cross your fingers."

Villeneuve thinks the new BAR005 is an improvement from last year's chassis and has been happy with the performance in testing: "The car is better everywhere," he said after last week's test session in Barcelona.

"The fact that it's got more downforce and the weight distribution is lower helps mainly in the high-speed corners. It's very stable in high-speed corners but also much more nimble, so you can carry more speed into the slow-speed corners and when you start accelerating it doesn't snap as much as it did last year."

Villeneuve and team mate Jenson Button continue testing at the Valencia circuit in Spain this week.

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