By Huw Alban
May 22 2002

Heinz-Harald Frentzen had his Austrian Grand Prix ruined by his team-mate, and an silly overtaking move from Jacques Villeneuve. The Canadian driver received a ‘drive thru’ penalty for the incident, but Jacques reckons that punishment has a negative effect on entertaining driving. Jacques Villeneuve qualified his Honda-powered BAR in a lowly 17th in Austria, and the team adopted an aggressive two-stop strategy in the race to make up for it. Lower fuel allowed him to pass a number of cars, including Frentzen. Unfortunately he nerfed the German’s car into the gravel trap in the process.

“We have always concentrated on race set-up, and in Austria half a second covers 10 cars, so we were quite far back,” said Villeneuve. “But we had a different strategy that allowed me to go for it but, these days, you get penalties when you do that, so there’s not much point any more.”

BAR are now the only team on the grid not to have scored a World Championship point, and Villeneuve doesn’t rate his chances of correcting this at Monaco.

“We’re close to where we were in 1999, and the car is not very competitive or reliable so it’s not looking good for us,” he said, candidly. “On the other hand, we had a good race here last year and we seem better off in slow corners, comparitively, so we might be okay.”