Sauber C20 and experimented with tyre pressures. The McLaren team were seventh and eighth in its worst qualifying performance since the 1997 French Grand Prix. Coulthard in seventh could not improve his lap because of the headwind and a car balance that created oversteer. A minor loss of water pressure in his engine at turn three and on the back straight slowed his teammate Häkkinen in eighth on his final attempt. Ninth-placed Räikkönen was slowed by Villeneuve on a timed lap and had a recurrence of gearbox shifting problems from the prior two practice sessions. Panis took tenth after confusion over tyre strategy. Frentzen in 11th accidentally engaged his pit lane limiter at his first attempt and his best lap was on his second timed run before his car's balance deteriorated. Multiple errors from an unbalanced setup and weight distribution on his BAR 003 restricted Villeneuve to 12th. Jaguar's Eddie Irvine swerved into the pit lane to avoid hitting Alesi's spun car on his first timed lap and traffic left him in 13th. His teammate Pedro de la Rosa took 14th on his second lap. Bernoldi in 15th was ahead of his teammate Verstappen 16th after a spin at the final corner, which caused Michael Schumacher to swerve into a gravel trap. Burti and Alesi qualified their Prost cars in 17th and 20th, both complaining of a lack of car grip. Alonso separated the two drivers in 18th. Benetton's Giancarlo Fisichella in 19th had a misfiring engine and he used the spare car setup for his teammate Button. Car set-up issues and an understeer left Button in 21st. Tarso Marques in the second Minardi car was the final qualifier in 22nd; he spun into a gravel trap and took the team's spare car until a rear damper fault curtailed his running. Qualifying classification Warm-up The drivers took to the track on Sunday morning for a 30-minute warm-up session in dry weather. All drivers fine-tuned their race set-ups against the weather of the time, set laps in their spare cars and Jaguar and Williams tested their launch control systems. Both McLaren drivers improved from qualifying: Häkkinen recorded a lap of 1 minute and 11.647 seconds to go fastest. Coulthard and Frentzen were second and third and the Ferrari pair of Barrichello and Michael Schumacher fourth and fifth, the latter stopped at the exit of the pit lane with fire erupting from