In the first official qualifying session, Ayrton Senna was just 5/100ths
faster than in the first, untimed, session.  Despite that, he still placed
his Williams-Renault on the provisional pole for the San Marino Grand Prix,
pending Saturday's second qualifying session.  His teammate Damon Hill
fared worse, spinning over a curb at the bginning of the pit straight soon
after the start of the session, and managing just 7th place.

Benetton's Michael Schumacher closed the gap to Senna, almost a second faster
than in the morning , and less than 0.5s from Senna's time.  Lehto improved
strongly from the morning, qualifying fourth, 0.7s behind his teammate, in
his first GP qualifying session for Benetton.  Both drivers benefited from
a low-downforce setup in the afternoon.

Ferrari continued strongly, with Berger taking full advantage of the new
043 75-dgree V12 engine -- which will not be used in the race -- to take
4th place on the grid, less than 1/10th behind Schumacher.  Nicola Larini
showed a major improvement as well, moving up to 5th on the grid despite
using the older 65-degree V12.

McLaren was experiencing handling problems, dropping Mika Hakkinen from
5th in the morning to an unhappy 8th in the afternoon.  Martin Brundle spun
off at the Rivazza, resulting in a 15th place on the provisional grid.  Both
McLarens were slow through the speed traps, indicating low output from the
current Peugeot engine.

Once the pneumatic valve engines had been replaced by conventional ones,
Heinz-Harald Frentzen was able to put in yet another strong qualifying
performance, moving up to 6th place.  His teammate Karl Wendlinger also
improved, but only up to 11th place, complaining of udersteer and traffic.

Rubens Barrichello crashed his Jordan hard at the esses, hitting a tire
barrier at over 200 km/h.  He was taken to a hospital for observation,
but seems to have escaped with a concussion and some cuts and bruises.
Teammate Andrea de Cesaris continued his re-acclimatization in 20th place,
after losing a tire on the track.

[ /tom haapanen -- tomh@metrics.com -- software metrics inc -- waterloo, ont ]
[ "everything that can be invented has been invented."                       ]
[                        -- charles h. duell, u.s. patent commissioner, 1899 ]