First pole for Ralf; Jos 18th
Published on 30 June 2001 by Verstappen Info Page
We knew it was coming, today on his 26th birthday Ralf Schumacher got his first pole position of his career. Michael Schumacher was in a direct fight with his brother but got stuck on 0.01 seconds. David Coulthard and Mika Hakkinen are consecutively third and fourth.
Jos had a tough qualifying session. As expected anything better that 18th place could not be achieved. Directly after qualifying we spoke with Jos: "It is no surprise that we have to start from 18th, it was a very tough qualifying session. In these temperatures you loose grip and then you need more downforce, this results in a lower high speed. Nevertheless we did our best to perform to the car's maximum. We even improved the time of this morning, but to gain another couple of places on the grid we had to be 0.3 seconds faster. We had hoped to be in front of the Benettons but we didn't make it."
Jos expects a very tough race tomorrow: "Again it will be very warm (during qualifying it was 30 degrees Celsius). It will be very hard, especially on the gearbox. We will have to finish the race and have a good start, then we will see what the outcome is."
