Villeneuve Surprised at Podium Finish

A delighted Jacques Villeneuve admitted after finishing in third place at the German Grand Prix that he was surprised with his position following a poor qualifying performance on Saturday.

Having qualified in a disappointing twelfth spot, the British American Racing driver said he was surprised at scoring his second podium of the season after finishing third at the Spanish Grand Prix back in May. This time, Villeneuve said, it was much more enjoyable.

"I am surprised to be on the podium," he admitted. "I was hoping to get into the points and I felt we needed a bit of luck to get into the points but to get on the podium today is great. We weren't very competitive all weekend but this morning, surprisingly, in the warm-up, after a few changes on the car, it was really really competitive.

"I think that this one was more work into it than in Spain. In Spain we were not very quick and then Hakkinen broke down on the last lap so that was just pure luck and the car wasn't very driveable. Here today the whole weekend we worked really hard, we improved session after session and we knew that the car would be competitive so this one was more pleasurable."

The BAR driver admitted he was also surprised at the race director's decision to stop the race after the first lap accident involving Michael Schumacher and Prost's Luciano Burti.

"I didn't see what happened, but I was surprised when there was a red flag, because we already went through the debris once," he said. "By then the track was clean so the most dangerous moment of the race is actually the start so I was really really surprised."

Teammate Olivier Panis finished today's race just outside the points in seventh place.