Montreal, 18 June
Testing at Monza a week before the race Ricardo had his 4th 300 km/h crash in a BAR. Ricardo came out unhurt but shaken.
"Of course your mind is not 100%. free. Sometimes you think 'If anything happens here I will have a big crash.' But of course I don't want to slow down so its very hard."
As the Montreal track began to clean up during Friday practice both BAR Hondas started to look competitive. Sadly Zonta lost nearly 40 minutes of the afternoon session when a gearbox oil leak forced him back to the pits for repairs. "Overall, the car is quite good and very fast. I made a mistake in the first session when the track was dirty and spun off. The second hour was more important because the track was getting quicker, but we only managed to do a total of four timed laps before there was a gearbox oil leak on the car and I lost the rest of the session."
Friday 1st practice: 16th, 1:23.518
Friday combined practice: 20th, 1:22.668, 19 laps
Finally Ricardo was able to do a trouble free qualifying session, bettering his time on each attempt and finishing in 8th position, his best in F1 racing so far. His qualifying times were 1:21.404, 1:20.365, 1:19.869 & 1:19.742.
Saturday practice: 17th, 1:20.306, 32 laps
Qualifying: 8th, 1:19.742, 12 laps
Ricardo had hardly done half a lap during the morning warmup before the Honda engine exploded so he lost the valuable practice time.
Ricardo started once again with a heavy fuel load. When the lights changed Ricardo moved from right to left and keeping out of trouble he held on to his 8th position. Following Frentzen (Jordan) he moved up one position when Coulthard (McLaren) had a 10 s stop-and-go on lap 14 and another when de la Rosa (Arrows), who was on a light fuel load, made a stop on lap 20. Ricardo was being followed by Trulli (Jordan), Verstappen (Arrows) and Coulthard, and he had to give way to Trulli on lap 24 while Verstappen and Coulthard spun and lost contact. Following Trulli, Ricardo started to reel in Frentzen, who was having brake troubles, and took over 6th position on lap 32. With Trulli and Häkkinen (McLaren) making stops Ricardo found himself in an excellent 4th position and ready for his stop when it started to rain on lap 42. But then all went wrong. Ricardo tried to call the pits for rain tyres but was unable to make radio contact. So Ricardo pitted on lap 43 and had to make another stop for rain tyres two laps later. Considering he came in just after Villeneuve the stop was a decent one but Ricardo was now down to 11th. What a lost opportunity! He continued behind Villeneuve until the latter crashed into R.Schumacher's Williams. Ricardo was once up in the grass in the Senna Hairpin but compared to the other drivers' off-track excursions it was actually one of the better performances that day. As Wurz (Benetton) made a late pit stop Ricardo pressed on to finish 8th, 8 seconds behind Coulthard's McLaren.
"The car was oversteering under power at the beginning of the race, but our strategy was to save a lot of fuel for the later stages. I wanted to fit wets as soon as it started to rain because it was clear looking at the sky that it was not going to be a short shower, but I could not make radio contact with my engineer and missed the chance to come in on that lap. That meant I had to stay out for two laps longer than I wanted to in wet conditions and effectively ended any chance Jacques or I had to score a points finish for the team."
Warmup: No time
Race: 8th, 1:42:22.768, (+1:10.455)
FL: 1:20.686 on lap 38 (+1.637, 12th)
Winner: Michael Schumacher (Ferrari)