Thursday February 24th, 2000

Formula One teams - bar three - were at Jerez today for the second of a three day test, the last big test of the season before the opening race at Melbourne on March 12.

McLaren's driver David Coulthard was fastest of the day with a 1:24.03, just a couple of tenths ahead of his team's test driver, Olivier Panis in a modified 1999 McLaren. Third fastest was Benetton's Giancarlo Fisichella, running some new aerodynamic parts, whose teammate Alex Wurz was sidelined while the team awaits part to arrive from the UK, after the Austrian suffered gearbox problems the previous day.

Heinz-Harald Frentzen was fourth fastest in his Jordan while teammate Jarno Trulli testing time ended prematurely when he suffered electrical problems, ending up slowest overall. The team will conclude its test at the Jerez circuit tomorrow, when Trulli is scheduled to take to the wheel for the whole day.

Sauber completed a second day in Spain after they were able to determine the cause of Pedro Diniz's accident yesterday. "We take safety very seriously and naturally any problem with something such as wings demands careful investigation. There is no way that we would have let Pedro drive today if we had not made a precise analysis of the problem that occurred yesterday," said Team Principal Peter Sauber. "The failure of the rear wing was due to a fabrication problem that was not detected despite our quality control tests. But we now exactly know what happened after testing the defective parts, and we have taken measures to ensure that such a failure does not occur again." Diniz completed 73 laps with a best of 1:25.35, during which he successfully conducted cooling tests to simulate the weather expected for the season opening race in Australia.

Several drivers encountered problems however, including Ralf Schumacher who suffered a blown BMW engine in his Williams and Jacques Villeneuve whose BAR-Honda suffered a water leak.

Today's times:

Pos  Driver        Team                Time    
 1.  Coulthard     McLaren-Mercedes    1:24.03 
 2.  Panis         McLaren-Mercedes    1:24.22 
 3.  Fisichella    Benetton-Playlife   1:24.68 
 4.  Frentzen      Jordan-Mugen Honda  1:25.09 
 5.  Irvine        Jaguar-Cosworth     1:25.17 
 6.  R.Schumacher  Williams-BMW        1:25.31 
 7.  Diniz         Sauber-Petronas     1:25.35 
 8.  Herbert       Jaguar-Cosworth     1:25.69 
 9.  Villeneuve    BAR-Honda           1:26.03 
10.  Alesi         Prost-Peugeot       1:26.98 
11.  Junqueira     Williams-BMW        1:27.04 
12.  Trulli        Jordan-Mugen Honda  1:27.24 

The Jerez lap record is 1:23.072 (R. Barrichello)