"I must say that Bridgestone brought very good tyres," said Trulli. "They are a major step forward in terms of performance, especially for the race. So, I think I can do a good job tomorrow. The balance of the car was perfect. We worked very well throughout the test and through practice here. Qualifying was tough because of traffic; it was hard to find a clear lap. I also have to apologise to Michael Schumacher because I made a misjudgement. I saw him coming and tried to get out of his way, but I don't think it was enough. We spoke at the end of qualifying and I explained what happened. But, overall, I'm very pleased with our qualifying performance. Everyone on the team did a great job."

Frentzen made a strong recovery from a difficult morning when he spent much of the two 45-minute sessions in the pits, first with a misfire and then when rectifying something which had come loose in the cockpit.

"After a tremendously unlucky session this morning, when I spent most of the time in the pits and couldn't work on the qualifying set-up, I'm pleased with this result," said Frentzen. "We went into qualifying without knowing about how good or bad the balance would be. We just based the qualifying set-up on theory rather through logical conclusions reached during the morning. So I'm happy with seventh place even if I couldn't improve my lap time because of incidents during the last two runs. On one of them, unfortunately, Olivier Panis was in the way and I don't understand that because he was in on his 'in' lap. I am only a couple of tenths away from Montoya in sixth place and I could maybe have done something about that. Still, seventh is pretty good; more than I thought might be possible at one stage this morning!"

"A very exciting qualifying," said Eddie Jordan. "Happy Birthday to Ralf, getting his first pole position; I'm happy for him and I'm happy for Jarno and for Heinz. Jarno's last quick lap was a very good, competent effort. Heinz has had a difficult time recently and to come back and fight hard like that and set that time, even though he was baulked by a slower car, was very impressive. Now we've got to translate such an encouraging performance into points at the end of 72 laps tomorrow."