of the respective sessions. Both sessions lasted 1 hour and 45 minutes. Qualifying was split into two one-hour sessions; the first was held on Friday afternoon with the second held on Saturday afternoon. The fastest time from either of the two qualifying sessions counted towards their final grid position. In the first practice session, Hill was fastest with a time of 1:21.664, two thousands of a second ahead of teammate Coulthard. Schumacher was third, with the Ferrari cars of Jean Alesi and Gerhard Berger, who had been the leading two for most of the session, close behind. Blundell in the McLaren was sixth, with teammate Häkkinen finishing the session in 14th position, the Finnish driver complaining of steering problems with the car. The two Ferrari drivers used different pedal layouts in the 412T2 chassis: Berger's car was equipped with two pedals and a hand-operated clutch, whereas Alesi preferred the traditional three-pedal system. Hill set a provisional pole position time of 1:20.081 during the first qualifying session, ahead of Berger, Coulthard, Alesi, Häkkinen and Schumacher. The session was disrupted after Schumacher crashed heavily into the tyre barrier at turn eight, a corner normally taken at a speed of . As a precaution, Benetton opted to keep Schumacher's teammate, Johnny Herbert, in the garage while the team found out what was wrong with the car. This meant that Herbert did not set a time in the session, while Schumacher completed only two of his twelve allotted laps. Speaking of the incident, Schumacher said that "there was a little movement in the steering wheel at the previous corner and at the next it went completely. I spun the car backwards into the tyre barrier and the safety structure behind my head did a good job of protecting me. For sure I am not very happy about this, but I believe that the team will spend a lot of time investigating the situation for tomorrow and they will find the problem." The problem was determined to be a steering failure, specifically a joint in the car's steering column. Replacement steering components were sourced from São Paulo by Benetton engineer Tim Wright, and the team did not encounter any problems over the remainder of the weekend. The second practice session was held in wet but drying weather conditions. During the session, Schumacher went off the track at the exit of turn five, damaging his car's