session to familiarise himself with Benetton's spare car after a lack of running in practice. He was ahead of Irvine in the faster of the two Jaguars, who set a best time that was one-tenth of a second faster than his own teammate Johnny Herbert in 18th; both were disadvantaged with the lack of straightline speed. Salo was 15th quickest for the Sauber team, ahead of his own teammate Diniz whose car handled badly under braking for the Rettifilo and della Roggia chicanes. The pair were marginally quicker than Zonta who encountered gear selection problems in his race car that saw him stop on the track, and switched to his team's spare vehicle setup for Villeneuve. Alesi and Nick Heidfeld in the Prosts were 18th and 19th after driving with understeer. They qualified in front of the Minardis of Marc Gené and Gastón Mazzacane who were 21st and 22nd respectively; Mazzacane stopped his car at the Lesmo corners with an electrical fault and returned to the pit lane to drive the spare car. Qualifying classification Warm-up The drivers took to the track at 09:30 Central European Summer Time (UTC +1) for a 30-minute warm-up session. It took place in dry weather conditions following a spell of mist that fell on the circuit. Zonta set the session's fastest lap of 1:26.448, which he set with nine minutes left despite a major oversteer at Parabolica corner. He was six hundredths of a second quicker than Häkkinen in second in the final seconds of warm-up. Michael Schumacher had the third fastest lap, ahead of Coulthard in fourth, Verstappen in fifth and Salo in sixth. No major incidents occurred during the session. Coulthard lost control of his McLaren in a spin at the exit of the second chicane due to a rear suspension fault but was able to return to the circuit. Irvine spun at the second Lesmo right-hand turn but got his car facing correctly and resumed driving. Race The race started with around 110,000 to 120,000 people in attendance at 14:00 local time. It lasted 53 laps over a distance of . The conditions for the race were dry with the air temperature and the track temperature . Every competitor began on the medium compound tyre since it was three-tenths of a second faster than the hard compound tyre. Blistering of the tyres were more of a factor at the Grand Prix