Jacques Villeneuve will start from pole position ...

Published on 12 July 1997 by Verstappen Info Page

Jacques Villeneuve will start from pole position at the British Grand Prix tomorrow with a best time of 1:21.598, besides him is teammate Heinz-Harald Frentzen. On the second row are Mika Hakkinen and Michael Schumacher, behind them are Ralf Schumacher and David Coulthard. Jos Verstappen starts from position 20 (1:25.010), Mika Salo starts from position 18 (1:24.478).

For a long time it looked like Mika Hakkinen would be on pole. In the 18th minute Hakkinen set the then best time of 1:21.797. Only 4 minutes before the end of the session Frentzen was able to improve on this time (1:21.732). Unfortunately for Frentzen teammate Villeneuve improved on this time again only minutes later and set a record time of 1:21.598, good enough for pole position tomorrow.

For Jos and Mika quelifying didn't go really well. There were no real problems but the V10's were unbeatable on this circuit. The times show it: between numbers 1 and 11 (Villeneuve and Alesi) is only an 0,8 second gap. Jos could not get a real good time in 4 sessions of 3 laps.

Rubens Barrichello had a troublesome qualifying session. When he first got on the track after 15 minutes he had to park his car besides the track directly with a technical problem. When he got on the track again with his spare car after half an hour the engine of this car gave up on him as well. Eventually Barrichello qualified 22th and last with 1:25.525.

Some things to remark: Alexander Wurz, the 'stand-in' for Berger qualified 8th with 1:22.344, while the experienced Jean Alesi qualified 11th with 1:22.392, no big time gap by the way. Eddy Irvine occupied 11th position for a long time but was able to find something to eventually qualify 7th in his last attempt with a time of 1:22.342.

For a complete overview you can take a look at our season page.