Barcelona day 1, am: Schu Jnr fights back

Despite a cold start to the morning, all four teams at the circuit de Catalunya made it out onto the track. Schumacher lapped his Williams-BMW in 1m21.4s, with Jaguar Racing's Eddie Irvine putting the Big Cat four-tenths behind on 1m21.8s. By comparison, Michael Schumacher's pole time for last year's Spanish GP, in much warmer conditions, was 1m 20.9s.

Jaguar has three cars at the three-day test, but only race drivers Irvine and Luciano Burti completed laps this morning. Test driver Tomas Scheckter is also on hand and German F3 ace Andre Lotterer is due to have his first taste of a grand prix car with the team this week.

Benetton new boy Jenson Button lapped in 1m21.9s and survived a high-speed spin at the daunting final corner but kept the car out of the pit wall. The beleaguered Prost team, meanwhile, tried out Michelin tyres for the first time and propped up the bottom of the time sheets, with Jean Alesi two seconds off the pace. This marks the French team's first test this winter and the morning running was waylaid by chassis problems with the AP03.

The Guyancourt-based outfit is set to run Sauber's test driver Enrique Bernoldi and Champ Car ace Oriol Servia this week with a view to finding a partner for Alesi for 2001.

Bernoldi was in line to take the second race seat at Sauber, had Kimi Raikkonen been denied a super-licence at last week's World Council meeting of motorsport's governing body. The Brazilian will probably return to F3000 if a deal with Prost doesn't materialise. Servia spent last year in CART with the PPI Motorsports team, which has now switched to the NASCAR Winston Cup.

With the weather set to brighten this afternoon and the sun beginning to shine at Barcelona, lap times should fall and Autosport.com will bring you a full round-up at the end of the day.