Trackside Report - Nicholas Farankl
BLITZED! NICHOLAS FARNKL - IN BUENOS AIRES F1 correspondent It's almost getting boring - and we haven't even had three races yet- but the course of the year and that of the former Indy Champ seem to be conspiring to produce a systematic whitewash of this years Formula One Championship. With very nearly a second in hand in this afternoons timed session - Villeneuve can afford to relax in the certain knowledge that he now has all but destroyed his fragile team mates physiological make-up. Frentzen who at one stage was fastest on the track simply failed to replicate his form when it came to the final few minutes dropping down to 7th spot. "I'm not concerned with the times today" said the German " we were concentrating on set-up for the race and sorting out the tyres, - tomorrow I think we'll be even quicker." And quicker they certainly are with JV setting a 1:25.755- that's almost 5 seconds faster than Hill's pole position time from last year! With full qualifying still to come. "We were on new tyres when we did the quick lap, so it's looking good for qualifying" smiled the Canadian after climbing from his Williams, "but as to the race we still have a lot of work to do on ensuring we are competitive over the full distance." Happy Jacques may have been, but the broadest grins were to found at the furthest point from the Williams garage in the paddock. Hiding at the end - "where all the the rubbish goes" was Stewart GP, 2nd fastest with Barrichello and Jackie doing a very fine impression of a Cheshire cat. "This has been a good day, but I've been around long enough to know that we'll be luck to repeat this in practice and realistically speaking I would be happy with a top ten start and a top ten finish." Much of both Stewart's and Prost's success is being attributed to the Bridgestone tyres that performed so brilliantly in Brazil and are fast making waves in F1. Jackie was having to accept that in terms of machinery, the shoes are what's making the thing fly - "Yes the tyres are clearly good, but my goodness I won here 25 years a go and I know what difference a good chassis makes- and here it's not all power you know". With Panis 3rd some 1.2 secs down on JV, Berger 4th and Michael Schumacher 5th - Goodyear have finally woken up after 10 years of comfortably napping. " It's got us working very hard" commented Dermot Bainbridge from Goodyear, " we were spending all our time on next years grooved tyres so this has rather taken a back seat-but here we have made revisions". -he wouldn't say what. Ferrari seems to have found the cause of it's chronic handling problems - the car at least appeared to be very settled in the quick corners and not too bad in the slow ones although Schumacher is adamant that he could be faster with "other" tyres. Even so he'd be better off watching his own back as a recent doctors examination revealed that the former 2-time World Champion has been racing since 1991 with a broken neck! Handicapped? I think not with $100m in the bank (I think Geneva), 2 WC's in the bag and a healthy little girl in the cot.
