By Phil Giles
April 24 2004

Giorgio Pantano has outqualified team mate Nick Heidfeld at the Imola circuit, placing his EJ14 on the 15th place on the grid for tomorrows race. Giancarlo Fisichella and Kimi Raikonnen both failed to post times and start from behind the Minardi duo of Zsolt Baumgartner and Gianmaria Bruni.

Eddie Jordan praised the BAR squad for clinching their and Jenson Button's first pole position.  "Congratulations to everyone at BAR Honda on their fine pole position." He said.  Eddie was quick to point out that Jordan scored Honda's last pole!  "Honda’s last pole was with Jordan and Heinz Harald Frentzen at the European Grand Prix at Nurburgring in 1999." He continued.

GIORGIO PANTANO (EJ14/02) 15th 1:23.352
"I’m feeling a little bit more positive at this race because I’m getting much closer to my teammate and that is the important thing for me. I think we have also made some changes which have improved the car a bit, and the gap between us and the cars in front is getting smaller. A few more races and hopefully we can close it even more. I’m happy with my qualifying and really looking forward to racing tomorrow."

NICK HEIDFELD (EJ14/03) 16th 1:23.488
"I think my qualifying lap was not too bad although half way through I started to lose a bit of grip, with oversteer affecting the rest of the lap. Otherwise, we have some new things and the car has improved since the last race. I would have hoped to have been even closer to the cars ahead of us but we just have to keep working hard to close the gap."

JAMES ROBINSON
HEAD OF RACE AND TEST ENGINEERING
"There seemed to be some different ideas about fuel load strategy in the first qualifying session today and it’s quite hard to understand why certain cars chose to do what they did in the second session. Giorgio wasn’t happy with the balance of the car in first qualifying, but Dominic (Harlow, his race engineer) made a number of changes much to Giorgio’s liking and he made good use of the car in second qualifying. Nick was reasonably happy with the car. Following his first run he only made a number of small changes but felt he didn’t have as much grip in the second run, getting a little bit sideways at Aqua Minerale. It will be interesting to see where people are with regards to strategy in the race tomorrow and if any of the cars pit before lap 10."