qualified on pole position for the 28th time in his career, and his fifth of the season, with a lap time of 1:17.514, which he set on his first fast lap midway through qualifying. He was joined on the front row of the grid by Coulthard, who was 0.372 seconds slower than Michael Schumacher's pace on his third and his last run. McLaren did not optimise Coulthard's vehicle to run with a low amount of fuel and had an oversteer in the first two sectors of the circuit. Häkkinen, third, made significant changes to the setup of his car by adjusting the rear anti-roll bar and the front torsion beams he tested early in qualifying to discover if it improved his performance. Ralf Schumacher used the newer Williams qualifying engine and achieved his best qualifying performance of the season in fourth. He said he was pleased with revisions to his car's aerodynamics. Barrichello, fifth, had car handling difficulties and said Coulthard prevented him from lapping faster. Frentzen, sixth, had excess oversteer in the track's final two sectors. Fisichella qualified seventh and he said Michael Schumacher slowed his final run. Ferrari attempted to inform Schumacher about Fisichella behind him but Ferrari technical director Ross Brawn pressed the wrong radio button and mistakenly told Barrichello. Brawn apologised for the error and Benetton technical director Pat Symonds downplayed it. Button was the slower of the two Williams drivers in eighth. Salo took ninth and attributed this to cloud cover coming during his last run. Irvine placed tenth. Wurz in 11th failed to qualify in the top ten by two-tenths of a second after switching to his teammate Fisichella's setup. Trulli qualified 12th after experiencing oversteer that could not be rectified by car component and setup changes. He was ahead of Diniz in 13th who was slowed by traffic and had difficulty setting up his vehicle. Alesi was the faster of the two Prost drivers in 14th. De La Rosa took 15th on the soft compound tyre and was the highest qualifying Arrows driver. Villeneuve was 16th after his BAR chassis was unable to produce sufficient amounts of downforce. Johnny Herbert, 17th for Jaguar, experienced excess oversteer and he spun late in the session. He was followed by Zonta in 18th who had a lack of downforce. Nick Heidfeld switched to the spare Prost AP03 car for his fourth run and he reported excess