The Qualifying Session opens with Marques, ten minutes after start. Villeneuve, however, improves the lap time with more than three seconds, despite of a small mistake, with too much speed in one corner! After 20 minutes we see Coulthard out, and he takes a temporarily pole with -1,13. Mika comes out soon after and takes second place after his Team Mate with +0,48. Five minutes later the youngest and most popular Schumacher takes pole with -0,73, and his brother doesn't even beat him with his first try. He has to settle with 2nd, +0,15 slower. Rubens, Montoya and Frentzen all set better lap time than Mika's first fast lap, proving that McLaren once again has problems with the high speeds. Coulthard improved his own time, but not enough to take Schumi's place, and soon after he had to give up his 3rd place to Mika, who improved. Ralf improves his pole, and with just 20 minutes left Montoya improves too and places Williams on pole AND 2nd grid! But Schumi, the darn thing, takes pole once again with an incredible time -0,26 secs. The other Finnish driver, Kimi Räikkönen, takes a great 8th. All the cars are out in the last few minutes as usual, with both Finns as the last two cars, but noone improves and David is even off the track. Schumi will start side by side tomorrow with his brother, Ralf, followed by Ralf's Team Mate, Montoya, then Rubens, David and finally Mika on 6th...

Mika's comment after the qualifying: "I’m obviously a bit disappointed as fifth and sixth are not ideal starting positions, but the race is not until tomorrow. We are not suffering from a specific problem and David and I have almost identical lap times. However I’m just not able to get the power down in the low speed corners without losing the rear so we have some work to do before the race".

The race started without any crashes. Schumi, as always, didn't have a very good start, but he's a master in blocking other pilots, and managed also to keep Ralf behind him, keeping the lead from the start. Mika had a pretty good start and he was much faster than Rubens and David, but both blocked him off so he couldn't pass and he was forced to hit the brakes. First it looked like Schumi was escaping everyone, but after some ten laps Ralf started to catch up again and around lap 17 he started to challenge his older brother. Most likely his tyres, Michelin, kept him from keeping speed in the beginning. The Michelin tyres need to warm up quite much before working at their best. Montoya took surprisingly fastest lap in lap 26 and 27! In the following lap we saw both Schumacher brothers go to the pit at the same time, but Ferrari were faster and Schumi kept his leading position. David passed the pit in between the brothers, but Ralf easily passed David a few laps later. Was McLaren once again having speed problems? Mika too was passed pretty easily by Rubens in lap 32. Ralf was obviously too eager to leave the pit and got a Stop-and-Go-Penalty for crossing the white line at the end of the pit lane, when entering the track. That's not allowed, even though he only passed it with half a car, so his chances of winning or getting 2nd place pretty much disappeared with the cruel penalty. In lap 48 we saw Schumi pass Mika Häkkinen with one whole lap, which not only tells you that McLaren weren't incredibly fast today, but also how boring today's GP really was. .. Schumi finished (uh, surprise, surprise!) first, followed by (and this really WAS a positive surprise) Montoya, then David, Ralf, Rubens and Mika on 6th, as he started the race too...

Mika's comment after the race: "We made a good start and could overtake Barrichello before the first corner to claim fifth. However on lap 15, I flatspotted my right front tyre before the chicane and experienced strong vibrations until my pit stop. Once I had a new set of tyres I could go quickly again but it was too late. Overall I’m disappointed with today’s result".

Ron Dennis: "Our performance this weekend was not as we would have liked but it can only improve through our own efforts. Whilst the French Grand Prix is close, we are confident we can get better results with the package we have and of course we will work hard to improve for the second half of the season". [Big words. Put your money where your mouth is, Mister We-Can-Improve!]

Norbert Haug: "We have to improve and become faster to win races again". [Why are you telling US that?! WE know already, but do YOU?]

An interesting fact: Heinz-Harald Frentzen holds the lap record from 1997 (driving for Williams).

Map of Nürburgring