Europe 1999: Previews

[ Arrows | Benetton | BAR | Ferrari | Jordan | McLaren | Minardi | Sauber | Stewart | Prost | Williams | Bridgestone ]


Arrows [start]

The Arrows finished Practice for the European Grand Prix with Pedro de la Rosa in 19th and Toranosuke Takagi in 22nd position. Pedro missed the first practice session, when his car developed a hydraulic problem.

Pedro de la Rosa
"After our initial problems this morning, the team did a great job to repair the car in time for the second session. Although I did not know the track I was able to pick it up very quickly. We worked on different set-ups and I believe we are going in the right direction - new tyres definitely make a difference."

Toranosuke Takagi
"We had lots of different changes to the settings and the tyres were good. At the end of the second session I went out with new tyres, but unfortunately made a mistake, which cost us time."

Tom Walkinshaw
"Despite Pedro's lack of knowledge of the circuit I think he did a good job to put this morning's lack of practice time behind him, and finish in the top 20. We will try hard tomorrow to achieve a credible grid position."


Benetton [start]

Giancarlo Fisichella
"The car imporoved in the second session and I was able to push much more. But we are suffering from understeer and a lack of grip and these are the main areas we reed to concentration on to be competitive."

Alexander Wurz
"In the second session my car wasn't so good as there was a problem with the sensors so I had to come in quite a few times. The car was not easy to drive as there was very low grip but I also used very old tyres."

Pat Symonds : Technical Director
"We carried out the usual Friday programme working on the balance of the car. The were a couple of small problems with some damage to Giancarlo's due to a spin and a minor electrical problem on Alexander's car. We still need to improve the balance but overall we managed to complete our programme as planned."


British American Racing [start]

British American Racing came away from today's free practice for the European Grand Prix with mixed emotions. Jacques Villeneuve was reasonably happy with his car, setting his best time in the afternoon session to finish 10th on the day, while Ricardo Zonta struggled to find a comfortable set-up and dropped four spots to 21st in the afternoon round.

Zonta suffered with understeer in the morning session, and then several minor problems beset his car during the afternoon. Villeneuve, on the other hand, dropped to 10th from eighth in the morning but still managed to improve his lap time by almost a second, to one minute, 21.850 seconds, just over a second off the pace.

McLaren's Mika Hakkinen was fastest on the day with 1:20.758, edging out fellow Finn Mika Salo (Ferrari) who came in at 1:20.920. The defending world champion has won every pole but two this season and appears well prepared to attack the fabled Nurburgring circuit for Saturday's official qualifying round.

The story of the day on a dry and warm track was Olivier Panis of Prost who was 15th in the morning session, and then took off more than two seconds per lap in the afternoon to place third (1:21.134). Rounding out the top six were Eddie Irvine (Ferrari, 1:21.338), Ralf Schumacher (Williams, 1:21.385) and David Coulthard (1:21.461).

The European Grand Prix is the last event in the European leg of the 1999 FIA Formula One season. After Sunday's race, the Grand Prix teams will move on to Malaysia and Japan for the final two races of the year.

Jacques Villeneuve
"We did 42 trouble-free laps today, and the car seems competitive which is great, although we don't know what the other cars had for tyres and fuel load. We are running with a new clutch that is a lot easier to drive so my starts should be better this weekend, and I've also finally got the hydraulic differential, which I expect to make a difference. I had my first race win and my last at this track, but I've never been really fast here, so to be competitive today was a good boost. I usually don't like this circuit because of the inherent understeer, but we managed to find a good setup today to compensate for that."

Ricardo Zonta "I am not running with the same equipment as Jacques at this race as he has a new development differential and clutch fitted on his car, so I feel at a bit of a disadvantage. I also have some work to do on finding a good set-up. We started this morning with quite a lot of understeer, especially in the slower corners. We fixed that but the change made the car more nervous at the rear under power. Our car is performing better with new tyres and I didn't do a good new tyre run with my last set-up because my engine developed a problem, so I will have to concentrate on getting the best compromise set-up on Saturday morning."

Craig Pollock : Chairman & CEO, British American Racing
"We were surprised that Ricardo was unable to do better today, and we will have to do some work before Saturday to get him back on track for a good qualifying position. Jacques had a good day and is quite happy with his performance up to now."

Robert Synge : Team Manager , British American Racing
"Jacques had a very good session and seems to be fairly happy with the balance of his car, although we were not as quick as we had expected on new tyres. Ricardo is struggling a little at the moment but we expect him to move closer to Jacques on Saturday. Neither car experienced any mechanical problems today."


Ferrari [start]

Jean Todt
"We concentrated on the race today. Practice went quite well and we have found some good reference points for our work. As usual on Friday, it is difficult to get a clear picture of everyone's true potential."

Mika Hakkinen
"I am reasonably happy with the car although there are still some things I want to fix. I did some work for the team today and concentrated on the race rather than on my own set up. But from different bits of the laps I did today, we have a clear picture of what we have to do tomorrow. I also did some tyre testing. I am confident because I know there is a lot more to come from the car tomorrow. Generally, after all the work we did last week, I can feel the improvement in the car. I don't know if the tyre choice will be difficult, but I do know it will be important."

Eddie Irvine
"All the work we have done over the past few days has paid off and the car is much better, although not perfect. The main effect of the changes which we have made to the car is that we have more grip. At the start of the morning session, I had some difficulties with the tyres and set-up, but then we found a set-up that is promising. I am happy with the car and I think we will be much closer to our main opponents than at the last two races. For tomorrow, I do not know if I can get pole, but I will be aiming for a front row grid position."


Jordan [start]

The Benson and Hedges Jordan team had a heavy work load in the second practice session at the Nurburgring after both Heinz-Harald Frentzen and Damon Hill lost running time in the morning. Frentzen completed only two installation laps before an oil pressure problem in his gear box forced him to retire until the afternoon. Hill spun off after his car ran over a drain grating which had come lose on the track. The FIA accepted responsibility for the incident and allocated Hill a fresh set of tyres. Despite finishing the day in 12th (Frentzen) and 14th (Hill) positions, both drivers felt optimistic about improving their results tomorrow.

Heinz-Harald Frentzen
"Considering I missed the first session which meant there was not much time to set up the car, I am happy with the progress we made," said Frentzen. "I had oil pressure problem with my gear box and missed the entire first session. I feel pretty optimistic, however, because, on the basis of what we achieved this afternoon, I know we can make further improvements tomorrow morning."

Damon Hill
"I am happy with how much we managed to get done today, given that I lost a good deal of running time. Through no fault of my own I spun off after puncturing my car on a drain grating which had come lose on the track. I was not hurt at all, but there was a fair amount of damage to the car which took a while to fix. The team did a great job to get me out on the circuit in the afternoon and from the work we did in the second session I think we will be competitive tomorrow."


McLaren [start]

The West McLaren Mercedes team worked through the free practice sessions in order to prepare for Sunday's race. Mika Hakkinen put in the quickest time of the day with a 1:20.758 with his team mate David Coulthard finishing in sixth position having posted a 1:21.461.

Mika Hakkinen
"This is an interesting track for a driver as you carry a lot of speed into the corners, but this also means that you have to work hard to get the balance right. Today we have been preparing for the race and concentrating on finding the optimum race configuration for the car. So far everything has gone well and we will continue to focus on improving the car over the weekend."

David Coulthard
"As always we have spent today's free practice sessions experimenting in order to find the best set up for the race on Sunday. I found that as the session progressed I was struggling with some over and under steer, but I will be working with the engineers this afternoon to dial that out and find a good balance for qualifying."

Ron Dennis
"An uneventful practice that inevitably saw the speed of our cars drop as we ran throughout practice on a single set of tyres. The closeness of our competitors reflects the use of new tyres, and of course it is qualifying on Saturday and, more importantly the race on Sunday, that really matters."

Norbert Haug
"A good start to the weekend with Mika being fastest. He is more than half a second quicker than the next fastest competitor who was also using only one set of tyres. I am sure that David will improve tomorrow when the team will concentrate on qualifying."


Minardi [start]

Luca Badoer
"I think I found a good balance of my car. Tomorrow morning we will continue our work to optimize the set-up of the car. On new tyres I scored a good lap time even though I found traffic on the track. I am fairly hopeful for tomorrow and I believe we can further improve."

Marc Gene
"If we look at my today's position, it doesn't do justice to the car's potential. Actually we are doing a good job and I'm fairly satisfied with my car's behaviour on this circuit. I found a lot of traffic and this prevented me from doing an interesting lap time."


Sauber [start]

Jean Alesi
"The balance of my car was good today, no problems there. There was no massive wheelspin, no oversteer or understeer. It feel good, but I reached its limit in the condition that we ran it today."

Pedro Diniz
"It was a bit of struggle today to get the car balanced, especially on new tyres. I lost many time just trying a number of changes to the set-up. Then the front wing became detached while I was passing the pits. That was a big moment ! I wasn't aware of hitting anything beforehand, so I'm not sure what happened, but it was a job to keep control of the car. Fortunately I had time to get it slowed down force before the first corner."

Peter Sauber
"Jean had a fairly typical first free practice wich gave us the data to improve tomorrow. Pedro's progress was interrupted when he lost his front wing in a spectacular manner on the start/finish straight, after it was damaged by contact with a rubber course marker in one of the chicanes."


Stewart [start]

Rubens Barrichello finished seventh in today's Free Practice for Sunday's European Grand Prix. Johnny Herbert was 13th fastest.

Rubens Barrichello
Where do you need to find improvement for tomorrow?
"So far it's not looking too bad but we definitely have to find more speed for qualifying. The car was a little inconsistent. We started the day well but we seemed to get a little confused on set-up. I was able to use the kerbs as I wanted this morning but the car became unstable as the session went on. It's so important to be able to attack the kerbs here so that's something we need to work on tonight."

Johnny Herbert
What programme did you focus on today?
"We did a lot of work on race set-up and the car feels reasonably good on heavy fuel. I was struggling with understeer which is always the case here so I wasn't able to attack as much I would have liked. Obviously we need to dial out much of that understeer for qualifying tomorrow. I'm not too disheartened over my position today."

Paul Stewart
"We didn't make the progress we had hoped for today. We evaluated both sets of tyres to try and get a direction for tomorrow but there's some work to be done yet on our best set-up option for qualifying. We need to get back on the pace we had at the start of practice today."

Martin Whitaker
"We had a trouble-free day with the Series 3 engines during which we continued our work on optimising the engine for the circuit lay out and we are satisfied with the progress made so far."


Prost [start]

Olivier Panis
"Despite technical difficulties (a hydraulics leak and the disconnection of the gearbox to fix a screw on the engine timing device), we have all worked in the right direction today. The team has done a terrific job and we have progressed in every way. With a set of new tyres, like everyone else; at the end of the session, I finished third. I hope it augurs well for tomorrow."

Jarno Trulli
"Today, essentially, we worked on the set-up for the race. We have developed the car well. I used a new set of tyres at the end of the session, but I struggled to find good grip, so did not improve my time very much. We are now going to study the data to prepare for qualifying. I hope that the new Peugeot evolution 7 engine which Olivier tested at Magny-Cours last week gives us a chance to be well-positioned on the grid."

Alan Jenkins
"The choice to tyres is very important here. Olivier having worked last week during the last test on the best solution, we know better now the characteristics of the different types of tyres. Everyone in the team worked well today. Unfortunately, a mechanical problem on Olivier's car prevented us from doing as many laps as we hoped. So, we decided to redistribute between the two cars the afternon programme and to study the set-ups together."


Williams [start]

The Winfield WilliamsF1 drivers Ralf Schumacher and Alex Zanardi were fifth and 16th quickest in the first free practice session for the Grand Prix of Europe. The team tested some different aerodynamic settings on both cars, especially a rear wing on Ralf's FW21. It was the very first run 'on four wheels' at Nurburgring for Alex, who only managed to have a lap yesterday on a scooter.

Ralf Schumacher
"I am more than happy with today's performance, because I am more or less in the position I expected to be. I would be really glad if I could keep this place for tomorrow's qualifying. Also the weather is fine - and looks like it will remain so for tomorrow - which is for sure positive for us. I am quite surprised by the weather conditions, because generally in this time of the year, it is cold and wet at the Nurburgring."

Alex Zanardi
"We are struggling to find a good balance with my car but there is still enough time tomorrow to work in order to find a good solution. I am quite confident that we will manage to improve because, to be honest, we have several good ideas. Anyway, it's obvious that I need some time to get familiar with this track."

James Robinson : Senior Operations Engineer
"The Friday comment is always neutral, because it is difficult to know in which conditions the other teams are running. With regards to Alex, is to be underlined that he spent the first session learning the circuit, as he hadn't been here before. It was generally a positive day with no mechanical problems. Understeer was the main topic of the day and this will be our target for tomorrow's programme."


Bridgestone [start]

Not present at this time

European Grand Prix Weekend