Warm-up: Ready for the real thing?

Here's what happened in the 30-minute warm-up...

Alesi first man on the track, with Frentzen seventh in the queue. Both do an installation lap then return to the pits.

Frentzen runs his first representative lap and sets a time of 1m23.183s, good enough for third at the time, but with few other cars having set a proper lap time.

Alesi bangs in a 1m20.782s lap to put himself momentarily second fastest. Frentzen out too, and the German whittles his time down to 1m21.786s.

After a fairly long time sat in his car talking to his engineers, Frentzen is back out to embark on a long-ish run of 10 laps. The Prost driver puts in his best lap of 1m20.546s to momentarily sit on the edge of the top 12.

Alesi out again, putting in a best lap of 1m20.760s in a short four-lap burst.

Alesi out once again. Sets his fastest lap of the session, a 1m19.581s tour, then returns to the pits with a total of 13 laps on the board. It is good enough for 14th on the grid, but still some 1.2s off the pace of team mate Jarno Trulli.

Frentzen finally returns to the pits after running a session high total of 17 laps. He finishes the warm-up 18th quickest, one spot ahead of team mate Luciano Burti, but 3.631s off the benchmark time of David Coulthard.