practice sessions and took 16th. Two engine failures in practice required Jenson Button to drive the spare Benetton, which had poor grip and balance and left him 17th. Button felt the spare car which featured different steering arms that made it feel heavier to him did not suit his driving style. Fernando Alonso qualified his Minardi in 18th. Luciano Burti of the Prost team had balance problems that caused his car to yearn from understeer and oversteer and was 19th. The two Arrows of Enrique Bernoldi and Jos Verstappen were 20th and 21st; Verstappen droveArrows' spare vehicle after damaging his race car in a crash during practice and Bernoldi's engine cut out on his final timed lap. Tarso Marques for Minardi was the final qualifier in 22nd as he had a setup that could not be changed for increased car performance due to him replacing a sensor. Qualifying classification Warm-up A half an hour warm-up session took place on Sunday morning in dry and hot weather. All drivers fine-tuned their race set-ups against the weather of the time, and set laps in their spare cars. While he was briefly delayed by a battery fault that affected his car's gear change mechanism, Coulthard led with a lap of 1 minute and 16.915 seconds with the Ferrari duo of Michael Schumacher and Barrichello second and third. Ralf Schumacher, Häkkinen, Trulli, Heidfeld, Panis, Räikkönen and Irvine occupied positions four to ten. Bernoldi was the only driver to lose control of his car during the session, running wide at the first corner and continued. Race The race took place in the afternoon from 14:00 local time. It lasted 77 laps over a distance of . The weather was hot and humid with some cloud cover, with the air temperature between and the track temperature from ; conditions were expected to remain consistent with a light south-easterly wind and a 20 percent chance of rain was forecast. Tyre consistency from over the season was predicted to allow for a one-stop strategy and had the possibility of a slower car impeding the leaders for several laps. A two stop-strategy was theorised to give drivers a better chance of maintaining on-track position. While on a reconnaissance lap, Michael Schumacher locked his rear brakes and ran into the turn 12 gravel trap en route to the grid. The Ferrari mechanics removed most of the stones from his car