OrangeArrows start 2002 from 15th and 17th places

By Huw Alban
April 29 2002

Rain was the main feature again today, as yet again the elements thwarted the OrangeArrows teams chances of improving. A small technical problem and traffic didn't help the team to make the most of the available dry track time. OrangeArrows start the season opener from 15th and 17th positions.

Dark clouds threatened the start of the qualifying hour. Jordan's Takuma Sato was the first casualty of the session on his out lap, stopping is car on the circuit. In addition an incident between the BAR of Jacques Villeneuve and McLaren's David Coulthard brought on the red flag stopping the session after 10 minutes.
The team tried hard to make the most of the dry track time, but soon after the session restarted spots of rain started to fall reducing the dry track time to about 30 minutes.

Heinz-Harald Frentzen was out early, but a small problem with his car meant that he couldn't make the most of the dry track time. "We only got in one proper run today," he said after the session. "I had a small problem on that run with fuel pressure so the times would have been better later on if the rain had stayed away. There is not really anything else to say as it's hard to know where we would be if we had done a full session. I hope we can have a good race tomorrow and put on a bit more of a show for the spectators here." Frentzen will start the first race of the 2002 season from 15th place on the grid.

Enrique Bernoldi, had his first flying lap spoiled by the red flag, and then after getting a quick lap in after the restart was unable to adapt his qualifying strategy because of the rain. Enrique's one and only lap netted him 17th on the grid for tomorrows race.

"I lost my first run today as the red flag came out as I was beginning my first flying lap," Enrique said to the official Arrows website. "Everything went to plan on my second run and we decided that for the next run I would do two flying laps. Unfortunately we never got the opportunity to do that so I have to settle for 17th. It's by no means the end of the world though, we will just have to work very hard in the race tomorrow."

Technical Director Mike Coughlan agreed with Bernoldi's sentiment. "We could have and should have been faster today but there's nothing we can do about that now so we'll turn our attention to tomorrow's race."