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Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro:
Michael Schumacher 1st, Rubens Barrichello 3rd.
Ferrari arrived with three new F2003 GA chassis and the cars were quick
straight away. They were not however without problems. Rubens Barrichello
had to use the spare car in qualifying because of a water leak in his own
car.
"I was not 100% comfortable either with the seat or with the set-up," said
Rubens. "I am really happy to be this close to Michael in the
circumstances."
Schumacher had no complaints but said that he was expecting hot weather on
Sunday.
"I am predicting that the cars will be sliding a lot," he said.
The cars had not before been run on light fuel loads and technical director
Ross Brawn said that he thinks the cars can be improved in the future.
"I am a little bit worried that the Michelin runners are as close to us as
they are. If you look at the consistency of their lap times we could be in a
situation where they are holding us up in the race."
BMW WilliamsF1 Team: Ralf Schumacher 11th, Juan Pablo Montoya 14th.
There was much disappointment for the Williams team after a promising
morning when Ralf Schumacher was fastest.
"This is disappointing," he said. "The balance of the car was not good and I
made a mistake and I almost lost control of the car. We have to improve the
set-up because the potential it has is a lot better than the performance we
have seen today."
Montoya complained that he was suffering from severe oversteer.
"We never found a good set-up," he said.
"We have to check the data and work out why the car was so much better in
the morning than it was in the afternoon," said Senior Operations Engineer
Sam Michael. "At the moment we don't know."
West McLaren Mercedes: Kimi Raikkonen 8th, David Coulthard 9th.
The McLaren team was not as fast as might have been expected.
"Obviously the new Ferrari is quick," said technical director Adrian Newey.
"Michael's time is particularly good. We are not really sure where we stand
in relation to our rivals at the moment because we really suffered from
running first at the start of the session when the track was very dirty. It
improved as the session went on so we do not look as good as we really are.
Apart from that we had no real problems."
Mild Seven Renault F1 Team: Jarno Trulli 2nd, Fernando Alonso 10th.
It was not an easy day for Renault but the result was a promising one with
Jarno Trulli second quickest.
"It is an excellent day for us," said chief engineer Pat Symonds. "Jarno's
performance was much better than we had hoped and we are very happy.
Fernando's car was not as quick but we hope to be able to improve things
tomorrow."
Alonso suffered an engine problem in the morning session and Trulli also
lost time because of a steering problem.
Sauber Petronas: Heinz-Harald Frentzen 16th, Nick Heidfeld 17th.
Sauber struggled to be competitive.
"The changes that we made to the cars for this afternoon's session were a
step in the wrong direction for both drivers," said technical director Willy
Rampf. "Both drivers had serious oversteer problems."
Jordan Ford: Giancarlo Fisichella 15th, Ralph Firman 18th.
The performance of Jordan was not very satisfactory
"It has not really been the best day for us," said chief engineer Gary
Anderson. "We lost our way at the end of the unofficial test session this
morning and never really got on top of the problem during morning practice.
We obviously have a lot of work to do."
Giancarlo Fisichella said that he was not surprised by the lack of
performance
"We didn't expect to be in good shape at this circuit because it does not
suit our car," he said.
Jaguar Racing: Mark Webber 7th, Antonio Pizzonia 13th.
Mark Webber had a promising day.
"It was a great day for me," he said. "I managed to do a total of 75 laps
today and that is important because the cars need to be reliable here. I had
no issues. The car was well balanced but I made a bit of a mistake in Turn 9
although that meant that I carried more speed out of the corner so it sort
of cancelled itself out. I think we will struggle to be in the top 10
tomorrow."
Antonio Pizzonia had a difficult day. He was given two speeding fines in the
morning and accidentally hit one of his mechanics when he arrived in the
pits. Fortunately the mechanic was not hurt.
"I was a bit disappointed this afternoon," he said. "The car was quicker in
the morning and we expected to be faster than this but we made a change to
the set-up and it did not help because the back of the car was a bit
nervous."
"We are very encouraged," said managing-director David Pitchforth. "We are
where we expected to be with Mark. Antonio did a good lap but struggled this
morning because he had to switch backwards and forwards to the spare car
this morning because of a gearbox problem."
Lucky Strike BAR Honda: Jenson Button 5th, Jacques Villeneuve 12th.
Jenson Button was very quick in his BAR-Honda.
"I didn't have a clue how fast I was going because the computer readout was
not working," he said. "The car felt quick and certainly very stable, which
was nice because it had been twitchy this morning in the high speed corners.
I thought it might get worse this afternoon. We made some changes and the
car was good."
There were no obvious problems for Jacques Villeneuve.
"We are encouraged to be so far up the order," said technical director Geoff
Willis, "particularly the other Bridgestone runners."
European Minardi Cosworth: Jos Verstappen 19th, Justin Wilson 20th.
"This track is particularly sensitive to testing and we have not done it and
we are paying a high price for that," said team boss Paul Stoddart. "We have
struggled with the soft tyres where the others seem not to be."
Panasonic Toyota Racing: Cristiano da Matta 4th, Olivier Panis 6th
There was much rejoicing at Toyota with both drivers setting good times in
first qualifying
"Here in Barcelona we are finally on a circuit that we know very well," said
team boss Ove Andersson. "We know what makes a good set-up here and we are
very happy. We feel we have great potential here and that it is just a
matter of unlocking it."
Bridgestone: Hisao Suganuma: "The track was very green this morning
which caused some graining at the front for our tyres but the situation has
improved as the cars did more running and if the weather stays as it is we
should not experience any problem in the race. I am pleased with the
performance of the new Ferrari because the tyres were not specifically
designed for that car."
Michelin: Pierre Dupasquier: "The circuit was more abrasive than when
we were last here and the conditions have changed a lot since this morning.
I think they will go on changing between now and the race." |
