2001 Italian Grand Prix Race Report
with 1:22.624s. Screwing up a couple of sector times, the German was satisfied with his performance. Did he find it difficult to string together the perfect lap? "In the important run, certainly, there was a mistake in the first sector; that was the third last run and that killed the overall lap time, but that's the way it is sometimes in qualifying." Michael announced. "You can't always do things very well. Obviously I was trying to go for the pole position so the only way to get that time was to push very hard and maybe overdo it... " Fourth, and struggling to keep pace with Williams team mate Montoya, Schumacher R struggled to find a good set up yet remained hopeful for the race. "Unfortunately for me qualifying was less successful than expected," he said. "My car alternated between oversteer and understeer and it also did not help that on one of my runs I had to slow down because of yellow flags. Now for the first time this year, the Schumacher family starts from the second row, it will be exciting for sure." Continuing his impressive qualifying record, Jarno Trulli claimed 5th for Jordan and with a 1:23.126s lap, the Italian pleased with everyone's efforts. "A great qualifying session for me," he declared. "I'm really happy for me and the team; we all did a great job and I'm looking forward to tomorrow because, with the help of this new tyre from Bridgestone for this weekend, we have a good chance of being competitive throughout the race."
The McLaren cars struggled all weekend with set ups and with both Coulthard (1:23.148s) and the soon-to-be departing Mika Hakkinen (1:23.394s) claiming 6th and 7th respectively, overall, the team looked a shadow of it's former self. Rounding out the top ten, both Sauber's looked strong with Nick Heidfeld (1:23.417s) yet again out qualifying team mate Kimi Raikkonen (1:23.595s) while the ever improving de la Rosa took 10th for Jaguar with 1:23.693s.
Race day dawned hot and sunny with Schumacher topping the time sheets in morning warm up, the hope of a Ferrari victory began to gain momentum. His McLaren having apparently exorcised it's handling difficulties, Coulthard was second followed by Montoya's Williams and Barrichello. Fifth was Raikkonen, with the two Jordan's of Trulli and Jean Alesi next up, then Ralf Schumacher, Hakkinen and Villeneuve in 10th.
Still awaking from the nightmare of the past week, the tifosi
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