Mika's comment at the arrival to Nurburgring: "I was testing at Jerez on Tuesday and Wednesday last week and combined with my victory in the last race, I'm confident that I can continue my winning form this weekend. Last year's race was a bit of a lottery and in the end I was happy to leave with a few points - I want to leave with more this time".

Qualifying session: Häkkinen's first lap out after the warm-up lap went well. He beat Ralf Schumacher convincingly with -1,06 sec despite of a bit traffic during the lap, trying to pass one of the Jaguar pilots. Unfortunately Coulthard beat his time just seconds after, quickly followed by Schumi with -0.52 sec. The next thing we saw of Häkkinen was him leaving his car, and speculations about car problems came up. Did Häkkinen have to change to the secondary car? Nevertheless, Häkkinen came back on the track and beat Schumi with -0,306 sec, and Schumi's try to beat Häkkinen's new time didn't succeed right away due to at least two driving mistakes, incl. breaks which locked in one turn, but Häkkinen didn't keep his pole position, though. His time was beat by his team mate, Coulthard, with -0,256 and right after this Schumi also beat Häkkinen's time. Rain forced the drivers to take a long break, and when Häkkinen left on the track, so did ALL the other cars, now with 22 cars on the track at the same time. The track was still too wet, though, and Häkkinen didn't improve enough to beat neither his Team mate nor his worst rival. Häkkinen will start from grid three tomorrow, behind Coulthard and Schumi. Barrichello starts from grid four. Due to problems with the car during the free practice, Mika himself said that he had to be satisfied with a third place. *sigh*

Mika's comment after the qualifying session: "I'm not entirely satisfied with qualifying third but I haven't felt 100 percent comfortable with the car throughout the weekend. We have made a lot of progress and continued to do so throughout today's practice sessions and qualifying, but the car is still not performing at its optimum level. We will look at the data and find out where we can improve and look forward to the race tomorrow".

The race: The start was amazing! Häkkinen jumped out of his grid like a little rabbit, in between his team mate, Coulthard, and Schumi and overtook them easily before the first 50 meters had been driven. He kept his position in more than 10 laps, but Schumi was right in his ass all the way, and finally Häkkinen let him pass (quite nicely, I might add). Then Rain started to fall and everybody had to go change the tyres. Unfortunately Häkkinen's first pit stop took over 15 seconds to Schumi's 12, and he dropped to position four behind Schumi, Coulthard and Button. It didn't take long, though, before Mika passed both Button and David Coulthard and became second, but had over 17 seconds to catch up to Schumi. Mika had some great laps, he drove as much as two seconds faster than Schumi, but later on the distance between them increased again and grew back to the 17 seconds. Verstappen, Irvine and Ralf Schumacher had a minor crash. Ralf spund off the track, trying to avoid impact with Irvine, who was already spinning around on the track after touching Verstappen's car, when Verstappen passed him, and all three pilots finally had to retire. When Schumi went for his second pit stop, he came back on the track a whole 20 seconds after Mika, and after that Mika ran away. Just when one thought that McLaren perhaps had a better strategy this time with only one pit stop, Mika had to go and change his tyres, just after he had lost three seconds trying to pass two drivers, who had their own little battle. Those three seconds probably caused Häkkinen his leading position because he didn't come back on the track in front of Schumi, and Schumi started to run away with his lighter car. The distance was 14 seconds before Mika started to catch up with him again. But every time he catched Schumi with two-three seconds, he lost some due to all the traffic, so he closed in on Schumi painfully slowly. Mika came as close as 4,9 seconds but caught in traffic he lost six seconds again and the positions didn't change no more. Schumi crossed the finishing line first, 13 seconds before Häkkinen, Coulthard third and Barichello fourth, both drivers over one whole lap later.

Mika's comment after the race: "I made what was probably one of the best starts of my career to take the lead from third on the grid. The problem we suffered from in qualifying had been solved and the balance of my car was very good. I lost valuable time in my first pitstop when there was a problem with the rear right tyre. However, I was able to open up a significant gap to Schumacher, during the middle section, but unfortunately on the last few laps before my second pitstop I was held up by a backmarker and lost too much time to stay ahead of him after the stop. Towards the end, I was catching Schumacher and would have been closer to him if I hadn't, once again, been stuck in traffic".

Last year the safty car came on for seven laps right after start, so Mika stayed second behind Frentzen. When rain started to fall the Team unfortunately called Mika in for a tyre change ? which wasn't neccesary since the rain stopped the following lap. Back again to the pit, and of course the rain started to fall again after this. However, Mika managed to get from a 14^th place to a sixth, and pressuring Irvine for a few laps gave result when Irvine made a mistake and spund off the track so Mika could pass. He finished fith and Johnny Herbert took the Stewart-Ford team's first Grand Prix victory ever!