Diniz was helped uninjured from his car – a fortunate end result as it was later revealed that the Sauber's rollbar had failed when it hit the ground. The race settled down with the top six Frentzen, Häkkinen, Coulthard, Ralf Schumacher, Giancarlo Fisichella, and Irvine. On lap 17, Irvine passed Fisichella after pressuring the Italian into running wide at turn 8. Whilst further back Zanardi was an unfortunate victim to the collision between Diniz and Wurz as his car was damaged from this incident earlier on and would eventually retire on lap 11 when his Supertec engine stalled. Just moments later the rain began to fall and Ralf Schumacher took advantage of the damp track to pass Coulthard. At the end of lap 20, Häkkinen pitted for wet tyres, which proved to be premature as the rain quickly blew over and the track dried. The following lap Irvine pitted for dry tyres but the stop lasted 28 seconds with the right-rear mechanics seemingly confused over a last minute change in tyre choice. Team mate Mika Salo had damaged his wing the previous lap leaving the Ferrari pitcrew unprepared for Irvine. On lap 24, Häkkinen on wet tyres was lapping around seven seconds slower than the leaders and was overtaken by Irvine over the start-finish straight dropping to 13th position. Soon afterwards, with his tyres clearly overheating, Häkkinen pitted again to change back to dry tyres emerging just in front of Fisichella, who was a full lap ahead of him. Ralf Schumacher pitted from 2nd position at the end of lap 27 for his scheduled first stop leaving Frentzen and Coulthard battling at the front followed by Fisichella twelve seconds behind the leaders in 3rd place. At the end of lap 32 both Frentzen and Coulthard pitted for their first scheduled stops with both Jordan and McLaren mechanics impeccably turning their cars around in 7 seconds, and both returning comfortably ahead of Schumacher. At this point in the race both Irvine and Häkkinen were well out of the points, meaning that if the order stayed the same Frentzen, Irvine, and Häkkinen would have all been tied for the points lead with two races to go, with Coulthard six points behind them. What followed was a series of retirements. The first to fall was Frentzen, who ground to a halt at the first corner after his pitstop because he had forgotten to