Mika Hakkinen will start from pole position ...

Published on 27 June 1998 by Verstappen Info Page

Mika Hakkinen will start from pole position tomorrow for the sixth time in his career. After 15 minutes the McLaren drivers decided to go for their first run, in which Coulthrad immediately drove out Irvine for first position, who had to yield his pole to Hakkinen (1:15,279). In his next run Mika improves his time to 1:15,253, but he loses pole to Michael Schumacher who drives 1:15,159.

In his third run Mika Hakkinen drives the fastest lap of the qualifying (1:14,929), which nobody was able to defeat.

Jos drove an excellent qualifying and did for what the Stewart team has hired him; Jos starts tomorrow on the fifteenth position next to Rubens Barrichello who stayed ahead of Jos with 0,6 seconds.

In his first run Jos was called in by the team, not because of a technical problem, but because there were too many cars on the track to set a good lap time.

In his other three runs Jos improved his time again and again and he seems to feel already at home in the Stewart-Ford, also because of the very good cooperation with his engineer Malcolm Tierny.

To RTL4 pit-reporter Allard Kalff he said : "I hadn't suspected this, that it would go this well. The first time I went on the circuit I was hold up, so the first run was ruined. The second run was just the fastest I had done so far with this car and every run it just went better. You can clearly see that we make progress and again I'm very satisfied."