Heidfeld flies in Jerez testing
David Coulthard again headed the times on the final day of Formula One testing at Jerez in Spain but the star performance came from rookie Nick Heidfeld
Prost's new signing finished the day second overall, 0.8s slower than Coulthard, who was testing a number of components destined for McLaren's 2000 title challenger.
Heidfeld was 1.3s quicker than his experienced team-mate Jean Alesi, the reigning Formula 3000 champion improving his pace by 2s on the last day of the first F1 test since the enforced November lay-off ended.
Ralf Schumacher completed more laps than anyone else in the BMW-powered Williams but was 3.1s off the pace. The Jerez test was the first time that BMW had put themselves in a position to be directly compared with their F1 rivals. Although there were minor reliability problems on day one, the rest of the test ran smoothly, Schumacher completing the equivalent of a race distance yesterday.
'The test did fulfil our expectations,' said BMW Motorsport Director Gerhard Berger. 'We had incidents, but these will give us further important knowledge for our preparation programme.'
Times from day three of the Jerez test:
1 |
David Coulthard |
McLaren-Mercedes |
1m24.21s |
2 |
Nick Heidfeld |
Prost-Peugeot |
1m25.03s |
3 |
Olivier Panis |
McLaren-Mercedes |
1m25.37s |
4 |
Jarno Trulli |
Jordan-Mugen Honda |
1m25.53s |
5 |
Jean Alesi |
Prost-Peugeot |
1m26.37s |
6 |
Ralf Schumacher |
Williams-BMW |
1m27.34s |
Be part of the Autosport community
Join the conversationShare Or Save This Story
Subscribe and access Autosport.com with your ad-blocker.
From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.
Top Comments