15/07/2004
NEWS STORY
Ferrari's Rubens Barrichello topped the timesheets on the second day of testing at Jerez de la Frontera, in southern Spain.
The Brazilian, driving the F2004, spent the day testing tyres and new components for the forthcoming Grands Prix in Germany and Hungary.
Second and third quickest were the BARs of Jenson Button and Anthony Davidson, Button working on tyre evaluations for Michelin while Davidson focussed on set-ups. The Brackley outfit's test driver lost valuable track-time following a gearbox problem and then a blown engine.
Fourth quickest was Renault tester Franck Montagny, who was joined by RDD member Heikki Kovalainen.
The Finn spent the day acclimatising to the car, in his first full F1 test session. He steadily improved his lap-times, and conducted set-up work towards the end of the day, giving good feedback. He will be back in action on Thursday, with Fernando Alonso scheduled to drive on Friday. The decision was taken to test Kovalainen in order to give the race drivers a break following the gruelling series of back-to-back races and tests in recent weeks.
Montagny conducted tyre testing for Hockenheim and Hungary, looking at compounds. The Frenchman also completed a ride programme, making small improvements.
"We completed some useful work today in Jerez.," said chief test engineer, Christian Silk. "Heikki had a small problem which delayed him this morning, but then settled quickly and made good improvements to his lap time, without any mistakes. He ran a very sensible first day, and gave interesting feedback on his programme. He did a good job.
"Franck spent the main part of his day tyre testing for the next races, but also continued looking at the ride of the car. We made some small improvements in this area, and Franck will pursue this further tomorrow."
The perfect weather conditions, which saw temperatures reach 36 degrees C, allowed Marc Gene and Antonio Pizzonia to complete their respective programmes for WilliamsF1 without any problems.
Both drivers concentrated on chassis testing and set-ups in the morning, before switching to tyre evaluation for the Hockenheim and Hungaroring races in the afternoon.
Pedro de la Rosa was the quicker of the two McLaren drivers, once again, both men were driving MP4-19s, as the focussed on tyre development.
Splitting the two McLarens was Ricardo Zonta, who was again quicker in the current Toyota than teammate Cristiano da Matta, who was running the heavily revised car due to run in next week's German Grand Prix.
Christian Klien finished the day ninth quickest, 1.5s off the pace of the Ferrari, the Austrian losing track-time in the morning following an engine failure. He was joined by test driver Bjorn Wirdheim, who finished 2.3s off the pace.