Sunday February 20th, 2000

Persistent electronic problems has badly disrupted the Prost team's four-day practice session at the Catalunya circuit.

The team said on Sunday the problems caused damage to the APO3's gearbox and neither Jean Alesi nor Nick Heidfeld "was able to get any significant time on the track".

"We are obviously disappointed but determined to find rapidly the cause of (these problems)," said the team's sporting director John Walton.

"We now have our electronic team working with the Peugeot and the Tag engineers in order to find a solution and get the cars quickly back on the track."

In the mean time, Minardi's Marc Gene set the fastest time of today's test session at Barcelona, which saw only three teams running.

Today's times:

Pos  Driver      Team               Time     Laps
 1.  Gene        Minardi-Fondmetal  1:21.48   42 
 2.  Verstappen  Arrows-Supertec    1:21.70   72 
 3.  Heidfeld    Prost-Peugeot      1:23.27   22 
 4.  Mazzacane   Minardi-Fondmetal  1:23.86   23 
 5.  de la Rosa  Arrows-Supertec    1:24.04   48 

The 2000 Barcelona lap record is 1:20.230 (P. de la Rosa);
the 1999 Barcelona lap record is 1:20.540 (R. Barrichello)