Jacques Villeneuve will start from pole position ...

Published on 20 September 1997 by Verstappen Info Page

Jacques Villeneuve will start from pole position tomorrow at the Austrian Grand Prix on the A-1 Ring due to his winning time of 1:10.304. For quite a while it looked like Mika Hakkinen would have the pole but only 1 minute before the end of the session the Canadian improved over the time of the Fin (1.10.398), so Mika Hakkinen will start from second place. Trulli set the third time (1:10.511) in his T-car (!). In his first run he blew up the engine of his Prost. Frentzen starts from fourth place and on the second row are both Stewart's, Barrichello on a fifth and Magnussen on a sixth position. The Bridgestone tyres had the advantage today with better grip.

Jos, who chose for soft tyres, again improved his time considerably compared to the morning sessions up to 1:12.230, but still only good for a 20th position on the grid. Eventually Jos was relatively pleased with this, considering the lack of power and the Goodyear-tyres, and concluded that there was only a 1,9 second gap between him and the fastest man. Salo had no luck today. In his first run he set the last time and had to stop because of a mechanical problem with his car. In the T-car that was set up for Jos he only came to 1:14.246 at the end of the session, only good for the last position on the grid, partly because his T-car also suffered mechanical problems.

Only after 16 minutes and 38 seconds the first man went out on the track: Marques in his Minardi, followed by Jos Verstappen. Every team was waiting for more grip on the track. During the session there were quite some mechanical problems for several drivers. As already mentioned Trulli blew up his engine, followed by Pedro Diniz. Salo also suffered mechanical failure, just as Hill, Alesi, Irvine and Michael Schumacher. For a complete overview of all the times you can take a look at our season page.