The Qualifying Session: 25 minutes passed while everyone wwas waiting for the track to dry. Marques finally opened the session, but the track was still soaking. After 32 minutes Mika came out and took pole with -0,37. Schumi came out when Mika finished his fast lap, while David took pole from his team mate with only -0,025, but had to hand it over to Schumi, when he finished his fast lap with an improvement of -1,09! Ralf came on the track but had to settle with a fourth position with his first attempt, almost three seconds slower than his brother. I'm sure the time difference can be found in the tyre difference, at not due to engine problems with BMW. Rubens also had a pretty bad start of his qualifying session, only managing to take Ralf's fourth position, but soon after giving it up for Montoya. Schumi's second run improved his lap time and his pole. Mika's third try was ruined when he had to pass one of the Jordan cars during his fast lap, but David managed to improve enough to take Ruben's position, 3rd place at this point. When Mika came back to the pit, McLaren only changed his tyres before he went back out on the track straight away. Never seen THAT before during qualifying! During his warm up lap all the other cars came on, and suddenly things started to happen, the track drying rapidly. Montoya took surprisingly the pole position from Schumi with a whole second improvement! Then Villeneuve improved to fourth place, Rubens to 3rd, Ralf taking pole from Montoya but only to give it back to Montoya, when Pablo improved the lap time with an incredible -3,45! Not even Schumi could keep up with Williams, and finally Frentzen squeezed himself to 4th during the last few seconds of the session. So, the starting grid looks a bit different for tomorrow's race, which is of course always nice. Change is nice, here goes:
Montoya on pole, Ralf behind him, Schumi on 3rd, Frentzen 4th, Rubens 5th, Villeneuve 6th, Mika on a disappointing 7th, Fisichella on 8th, David on an even worse 9th and De La Rosa on 10th. Finnish Kimi Räikkönen starts from grid 12.

Mika's comment after the qualifying: "I'm really disappointed as the timing of our change from intermediate tyres and dry tyres was not ideal. As a result I didn't have the confidence to go the limit everywhere on the circuit on my first lap with the dry tyres, which was my last opportunity to improve. I played it a little too safe and then didn't have any more laps to improve."

The Race: All the red lights had turned on and with half a second to start, the race was stopped due to Frentzen, whose engine didn't start. When the second warm up lap started after some ten minutes or so, Montoya's car left him in the pole grid while the other cars took off, so he had to start from the last grid. The start went well with no crashes, but already in the 2nd corner Schumi passed his kid brother, Ralf, and took the lead. When Schumi isn't in the front row of the starting grid, he almost always has very little gas in his car from the beginning, so he can get a faster start and take the lead, which also seemed to be the case today, and in lap 2 he already had a 3.4 sec. lead to Ralf. Suddenly Irvine and Burti crashed, when Irvine tried to pass cutting off Burti and sending Burti off the track. One tyre fell off and without slowing down, Burti went crashing into a tyre covered wall with nearly 300 km/h. A lot of people ran to the accident place, Irvine being among the first ones arriving, all working together to try and get the big heavy bunch of tyres off Burti's car. The safty car went on the track, but one lap later the entire race was stopped. It was obvious that Burti was badly hurt, everyone fearing that he wouldn't survive. The drivers were walking about on the track amongst each other, chatting and waiting for some good news, while a team was still working hard on getting Burti out of his wrecked car. Much later the race was announced to continue, which could only mean that Burti was still alive. Rumors told that he was even able to speak to the medical team at the accident place, and since Frentzen continued his race as well, we all had to assume that Burti was going to be fine.
When the third warm up lap started, Ralf stayed in his grid position, and Ferrari kept up their we're-the-luckiest-bastards-on-earth-routine, now re-starting the race from 1st and 2nd place respectively. Mika had a bad start and both the Benetton cars flew out of their grid, overtaking both McLaren [what's new really?], taking 2nd and 5th position! Both Sauber retired in the following lap, and Montoya joined them with an engine failure. De La Rosa also had to retire, after he had changed tyres in the pit. Mika was the first one of the leading group to go to pit in lap 8, lasting 8.5 secs, returning to the track on 8th place. Rubens came back out on the track behind Mika after his nine seconds long pit stop, and Schumi pitted in lap 10 with 9.4 seconds, and returned to the track in 2nd position, only 2 seconds behind Fisichella, who still had a pit stop to go to. After his pit stop he regained his 2nd position, coming out on the track in front of David. Jensen Button went off the track, lost his front and drove straight to a wall with retirement following. In the very same corner Rubens also lost his front.
Mika pitted in lap 24 again, came back out on the track behind Ralf, but somehow managed to pass Ralf in the following corner, regaining 4th position. David's second pit took only 7.2 secs but he still didn't manage to go in front of Fisichella, and found himself stuck behind the Benetton driver for many, many laps. In the end of the race David finally passed Fisichella when they had to pass a slower car, at the same time Rubens finally passed Alesi, while Trully had to retire due to engine failure. Schumi won with over half a minute, followed by David, Fisichella, Mika, Rubens, Alesi and Ralf on a disappointing 7th, considering his grid position this morning next to his Team Mate. Only 13 cars finished today, making this race one of the most exciting ones for a long while. Let's pray that Burti will escape the accident without any serious injuries...

Mika's comment after the race: "This was a dramatic race. My second start was reasonably good off the line, and I could get up to third place on the first lap. However then I lost two positions to David and Rubens before I came in for my first stop. I had a good battle with Rubens afterwards until he had to replace his damaged nose, which was not a result of contact between the two of us. Unfortunately I couldn't charge the last part of the race to make inroads on Fisichella because of a handling imbalance, so I had to settle for fourth."

An interesting fact: The Spa track is the longest track and offers different styles of corner, including the world-famous Eau Rouge, the most challenging and daunting corner of the season and is considered by many drivers to be the finest on the Formula 1 calendar.

Map of Spa Francorchamps