With big supremacy McLaren came out of ...

Published on 07 March 1998 by Verstappen Info Page

With big supremacy McLaren came out of qualifying practice. Mika Häkkinen took the second pole position of his career while David Coulthard set the quickest time in this morning's free practice session. The Scot clocked a time of 1m30.456s which was half a second quicker than Jacques Villeneuve in the Williams. Michael Schumacher was third in the Ferrari followed by Villeneuve and, surprisingly Johnny Herbert. Also Toranosuke Takagi qualified better than most expected by setting a 13th fastest time. The other Tyrrell driver dissapointed with 19th place. The Brazilian failed to use the advantage of circuit knowledge he had over his teammate. Also the Arrows team failed to live up to the pre-season expectations. Salo qualified 16th while Diniz was two but last.

The session had to be interrupted for some minutes after Olivier Panis had spun. The Frenchman left his X-winged car in gear in a dangerous position. Afterwards the Frenchman was punished for this, his two best times were taken away and he got a 2500 Dollar fine in stead. This places Panis back to the last row just in front of his Prost teammate from last year.
Finally something for the statistics: It was for the first time since 1991 that two McLarens made it onto the front row. For two Mercedes powered cars on the first row we have go go back a little bit further, that happened in the Fangio/Moss era when the two aces of the fifties drove the 'Silberpfeile'.

The complete overview of all times can be found on our season page.