Barrichello Looking to Break Brazilian Jinx

Ferrari's Rubens Barrichello fired up the fans today as the first Brazilian since Ayrton Senna to claim pole position in his home Formula One Grand Prix.

After eight years of failure at Interlagos, the local favourite delighted the screaming spectators with a lap of 1:13.807 to push McLaren's David Coulthard out of the top slot by 0.011.

Barrichello's teammate and five-times World Champion Michael Schumacher was eclipsed and qualified a distant seventh - his lowest grid position since he started ninth in his home German Grand Prix of August 1998.

It was the Brazilian's first pole since Hungary last August, before qualifying became as much about strategy as speed under rule changes introduced this year, and the seventh of his career.

"It's going to be a challenge to read the papers tomorrow, it's going to be a challenge to get here, the whole day tomorrow is going to be a challenge," said Barrichello, wary of the national reaction. The Brazilian said before that he expected winning at home to feel like taking the Championship but he was prepared for the pressure and a rapturous reception from what should now be a capacity crowd on Sunday.

"What I have asked for in my life, since when I was a kid, was to be seated in a competitive car around here and to be waving to my public from pole position," he told a news conference after qualifying. "The only wish I have is to win the race tomorrow."

Barrichello has not finished a race in the city of his birth since 1994, when fellow Paulista Senna took pole little more than a month before his death at Imola, and has never before been on the podium here.

But hopes were running high after Saturday's decisive one-lap qualifying that 2003 is the year 'Rubinho' will finally break his terrible streak and continue a Brazilian winning sequence instead.

Compatriots Emerson Fittipaldi, Nelson Piquet and Senna won respectively in 1973, 1983 and 1993.