Slow start for Jordan

Bumpy Start
By Phil Giles
March 7 2003

Jordan's first qualifying session of the 2003 season ended with both drivers well off the pace of the current leader for pole Rubens Barrichello.

The new single lap session threw up a number of surprises and some excellent performances, however Giancarlo finished the session in 14th and Ralph in 17th.

The drivers appeared to struggle with understeer, Ralph especially, taking to the grass, loosing valuable time for a better placing in tomorrows final qualifying position.

Ralph:
“I am very disappointed but it was my first time qualifying the car and I was still learning a lot about the circuit.  What counts is Sunday.  I was driving as hard as I could to find the limit and pushed a little too hard when I was picking up understeer towards the end of the lap.  The tyres had started to go off and we’ll have to look at that and understand what was happening so that we can make the most of tomorrow.”

Giancarlo:
"For me the main challenge was that in this morning’s free session I had a problem with the car which meant that I lost the last 25 minutes of set-up work, so qualifying has been very difficult.  We know we have to make some progress.  During the qualifying run the car was not to bad over the first few corners but then I had some graining on the front tyres and that caused the car to have behave inconsistently over the last part of the lap.”

Gary Anderson:
“Generally it was ok, I am not too disappointed.  I think we should have done a little bit better, Giancarlo lost some time in T2, perhaps two or three tenths which cost us three or four places.  I feel we could have nipped into the top ten.  Ralph made a little mistake on the last sector and could have been a little bit better, but you only have a one lap hit so it’s pretty unforgiving.  The important thing is the race on Sunday.”

Tomorrow session decides the starting positions for the race on Sunday.