There were doubts on the race, due to the terrorist attacks in the USA, where the New York skyline would never be the same again. But the authorities deicided to go on with the sport. Many teams expressed their sympathies towards the incident, Ferrari by going into the race without any sponsor logos on their cars and driver outfits also accompanied by a black nose on their car, and Jordan, by sporting a US flag on its sidepot.
The qualifying was interesting as usual, with Williams and Ferrari dominating the proceedings. Williams were strong as expected, with Ferrari following them. Juan Pablo Montoya set the pace with the fastest time over the circuit, shortly before Michael Schumacher bettered his time. The final minutes of qualifying saw Montoya retain Pole position of the grid, followed by Ferrari's Rubens Barrichello and Michael Schumacher third. Ralf finished 4th fastest while Mclaren again faltered to make an impression on the grid positions. A freak accident saw Mika Hakkinen lose control of his Mclaren and crash at high speed, only to recover late enough not to better his qualifying time. Mika had announced earlier this weekend that he would be taking a year off from Formula One to pursue other interests of life, and spend more time with his family. To put it in his words, he had planned to take a sabbatical to discover life beyond just Formula One racing.
The race scheduled on Sunday started with a song dedicated towards deepest regard for those who had lost their lives in the horrendous atrocities that had taken place in New York on september 11th. The start of the race was good for Williams and Ferrari, both maintaining their grid positions, while it didnt pay off for Bennetton, as Button's heroics failed to save him from colliding with Trulli and spoiling it for both of them. Meanwhile Mika Hakkinen ran wide at the first corner letting the entire field go through before he joined the race track again. At the head of the field, Rubens Barrichello was having a great race, already having outqualified team-mate and Four times Formula One champion Michael Schumacher, but also by overtaking Juan Pablo Montoya to gain the lead of the race. Juan Pablo Montoya seemed to suffer from a gear shift problem, due to which he shifted to manual transmission later.
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