Minardi Dreaming after Freakish Qualifying

The Formula One joke today was that it had taken Minardi only a few weeks to lap faster than Ferrari once Bernie Ecclestone had become a shareholder.

Ecclestone bought into the struggling team last month and turned up in France on Friday to see their Dutch driver Jos Verstappen set the quickest time in first qualifying for Sunday's French Grand Prix.

It was all to do with the weather, rather than any mysterious powers that the Formula One supremo might possess, with the late runners taking advantage of a drying track while the Ferraris went out in full wet conditions. Verstappen, in the slowest car on the grid, was a full seven seconds quicker than Ferrari's World Champion Michael Schumacher, who was 11th.

"It has taken me nine and a half years in Formula One and 101 Grands Prix to achieve this result," said the dazed Dutchman.

His teammate Justin Wilson would have been second but the British rookie was stripped of his time after the car's weight was found to be 2.5 kg below the limits.

The shock result was made possible by rule changes introduced this season and designed to liven up the sport for spectators after a year of Ferrari domination. And this time the provisional grid was well and truly turned on its head.

Good Fun

"This is actually what Bernie Ecclestone and (International Automobile Federation president) Max Mosley wanted to see," commented rival team boss Peter Sauber. "And if the spectators like it too, then it's even better for Formula One."

Canadian Jacques Villeneuve, 1997 champion for Williams, said it was all good fun.

"It's amazing," he said. "That's what was wanted with these new rules and it's fun. Everybody knows why it happened and today's qualifying doesn't count in any way for the championship. All the guys that are fighting for the championship are bunched up together anyway. And that's what matters. It makes it fun and it makes it more interesting."

Ferrari's Rubens Barrichello agreed: "It's nice to see this result today even though it doesn't mean very much," said the Brazilian. "I'm happy for them."

Australian Mark Webber, fifth for Minardi in Australia last year and now at Jaguar, congratulated his former team boss and compatriot Paul Stoddart.

"I'm really happy for Minardi. After I did my run I went down to Paul and said 'Mate, just put some grooves (dry tyres) on the car and send it.'"

Normal service is likely to be resumed in Saturday's decisive qualifying but Minardi enjoyed their moment.

"It doesn't get much better than this," said Stoddart, hailing the "most momentous outcome in Minardi's qualifying history."

He was forgetting Minardi's distant past. In 1990, Italian Pierluigi Martini qualified on the front row for the US Grand Prix at Phoenix, alongside McLaren's Austrian Gerhard Berger.

The chances of Verstappen emulating that feat on Saturday are somewhat remote.