front tyres on his car with traffic slowing him. Alonso set the 19th-fastest time in his first Formula One qualifying session; he lost around half a second through an error. A strong understeer left Prost's Gastón Mazzacane in 20th. Burti in 21st had a left-rear suspension failure sending him into a retaining wall at turn five, stopping the session for 12 minutes to allow track marshals to clear debris. Occupying the last spot on the grid, Marques failed to set a lap time within the 107 per cent limit due to his unfamiliarity with the Minardi PS01's two-pedal setup. He spun at turn three before driving Alonso's race car. Minardi appealed to the stewards and Marques was granted permission to start the race under "exceptional circumstances." Qualifying classification Notes – Tarso Marques set a lap time outside the 107% limit, but he was allowed to start the race. Warm-up A 30-minute warm-up session took place on Sunday morning for teams to set up their cars before the race. It was held in overcast weather with spots of rain that made the track moderately slippery. While he was briefly kept in the garage with a suspected engine oil leak, Coulthard led the session with a lap of 1 minute 30.099 seconds, 0.053 seconds quicker than his teammate Häkkinen in second. Verstappen was fastest for the opening 20 minutes before falling to third. Montoya, Panis, Michael Schumacher, Heidfeld, Irvine, Barrichello and Frentzen followed in positions four to ten. After exiting the pit lane at the beginning of the warm-up, Bernoldi lost control of the rear of his Arrows and removed the nose cone from his car in a collision with the turn one wall. Race The race took place before a crowd of 128,500 spectators at 14:00 local time. It lasted 58 laps over a distance of . The weather was dry and overcast with the air temperature between ; the track temperature ranged from ; forecasts predicted heavy cloud cover with high humidity and no rainfall. Tyre durability and grooved tread wear were predicted to affect the race and analysis suggested one pit stop was the ideal strategy for drivers and teams. Jaguar isolated and fixed a minor vehicle design fault linked to Burti's accident in Saturday's qualifying session. They strengthened the double wishbone suspension on all three of their cars overnight. Irvine switched to the spare Jaguar due to a