Saturday September 25th, 1999
Hometown Heinz Forces the Door Open
Qualifying analysis, by Michele Lupini
Heinz-Harald Frentzen defied his critics this afternoon, forcing his foot into the world championship door with an emphatic and well-planned pole position for tomorrow's Grand Prix. Although it was a stressful weekend for the local lad until then, with car trouble keeping him in his pit and away from finding the ideal set-up, and an in-team debate on when to go out, Heinz came good in the end.
A race speed pitstop put him into the ideal position for the last possible lap, just after he was bounced from an earlier pole spot by Ralf Schumacher, Mika Hakkinen and David Coulthard in rapid succession. The McLaren pair and the Williams man will line up in reverse order of their losing the last four of many provisional poles, behind Harry-Heinz.
Row three will make Prost and Benetton ecstatic, with a yet to be employed for 2000 Olivier Panis edging out Giancarlo Fisichella for fifth, while Damon Hill pushed fellow ex-world champion, Jacques Villeneuve to the less popular side of row 4.
Eddie Irvine has to be satisfied with his Ferrari starting on the fifth row of the grid tomorrow. The Ulsterman had the worst luck of the four remaining title protagonists in today's lottery called qualifying, and he won't sleep easy tonight - knowing the job at hand tomorrow. He starts alongside Prost's Jarno Trulli, who tops off the ten best qualifiers.
Next came Wurz and Salo - the second Ferrari also heading the timesheets at one stage. In fact, Hill, Panis, Fisichella and Irvine all topped the provisional grid during the course of the session.
Behind Salo came Diniz, Herbert, Barrichello, Alesi, Zonta and Zanardi, from the Minardis and the Arrows set for another day's fight over the back of the pack tomorrow...
Frentzen was clearly ecstatic after overcoming the odds. "It feels fantastic to be on pole, especially here in Germany. But it wasn't all easy going for the German and his Jordan team on their respective second pole-positions. "We had a difficult time in the practice sessions with various problems. Then we had an argument in the pit lane about when to go out. It seems funny now, but it was pretty tense at the time."
Frentzen admitted that the conditions were difficult to master. "It was difficult to know what to do, no-one can predict what's going to happen, but we got it right. At the end I saw the track was drying out very quickly. We only had four and a half minutes and took the decision to change the tyres in the pit lane - that was the key decision. When I finally set my best lap, I had 5 laps too much fuel on board, but today we did an absolutely perfect job," admitted the German star. "The race will be tough, but we'll just have to do our best," he concluded.
"It was a good session to watch on television," said David Coulthard. "But for the teams and all the drivers it was frustrating - it all became a lottery. My engineers kept a good set-up for the car and it worked in my favour." Hakkinen was relieved. "I don't think I could have been much better. I wasn't too worried about the, but third's always disappointing - although we should be happy about the result." Mika went on, looking forward to the race: "Naturally we hope that the weather will hold good for the race, but we have a car with good set-ups for any weather condition."
Ralf Schumacher, on the other hand, was delighted. "It was all a gamble, but I ended up where I hoped to be," while Damon Hill, who probably topped the F1 timesheet for the last time today, was content. "At one point I was at the sharp end, which felt great, but I'm pretty happy with today's session. Being just outside the top six isn't bad."
It wasn't all honey and roses at Ferrari, though. "I had traffic on my first quick lap," said Eddie Irvine, "and then on my second, I hit a patch of water and the car slid wide and put me through the gravel trap. Our strategy never worked out and the track dried too much at the end of the session. However, I am confident we'll be much stronger in the race."
It's difficult, however, to predict tomorrow's race from looking at the grid. But looking at the morning session today, we see that although Hakkinen was a half a second in front, there were fourteen drivers within a second between second and fifteenth.
If Mika Hakkinen cannot make a brilliant start to lead the way into the distance tomorrow and ends up behind the strong and thus difficult to pass Jordan Mugen Honda, we could finally end up with what we've been craving all year now. That's a race intense and close enough to match the tight championship battle, rather than just another 1999 F1 procession.