Good news for the Italian tifosi: Schumacher ...

Published on 04 May 1996 by Verstappen Info Page

Good news for the Italian tifosi: Schumacher has his first pole position of the year. In an ultimate effort to grab pole Schumacher drove a very fast 1:26.890 in the last minute of the qualifying session. Hill will start second and Villeneuve third in the Grand Prix of San Marino, held at Imola in Italy. The McLaren's are getting more competitive as Coulthard will start 4th tomorrow and Benetton is still a bit disappointing with a 5th position for Alesi and a 7th position for Berger.

Jos Verstappen still had a lot of problems with the Arrows. In the morning session he only qualified 17th. He spun his car, damaging the left front wheel suspension. The problem could be fixed quickly but when he got back on the track he blew up another Hart engine. The qualifying session itself went reasonably well for Jos. Towards the end of the session he got better, qualifying 14th in the end, 2/1000 of a second before Johnny Herbert. After the session Jos stated that he still wasn't too pleased with the car. The car still has a lot of understeer, the engine lacks power and doesn't seem capable of withstanding a whole race. Next week (May 8 and 9) the Arrows team will be testing again at Silverstone, hoping to fix the understeer problem at least. See San Marino Grand Prix results for the qualifying times.