Valencia, day 3 - AM: When the cat's away...

Cold early temperatures meant times were slower than on the first two days, but Frentzen's best lap of 1m15.328s was within three hundredths of his best time from yesterday. Jordan switched its test emphasis from just Bridgestone tyre evaluation, with the German running traction control in his EJ10B fitted with this year's Mugen Honda V10.

Frentzen tried two practice starts and observers noted that the car sounded considerably different under acceleration.

"We're running a form of traction control on the car," he said, "but today's the first day we've started looking at it seriously."

Jordan will run works-spec Honda engines for the first time when it shakes down its new car for the first time in early January.

Rubens Barrichello was second fastest for Ferrari after a morning spent concentrating on Bridgestone evaluation. The Brazilian edged fellow countryman and Jordan tester Ricardo Zonta into third by just under half a second.

Arrows completed the four teams still running, but a brisk start for Pedro de la Rosa ended prematurely with a blown engine that laid oil and closed the circuit for 45 minutes just two hours into the session. Prior to that, the Spaniard had posted a 1m16.206s lap on his first run of the day in the AMT-powered machine.

Valencia testing finishes after this afternoon's session, with Bridgestone testing heading to Barcelona next week.


1 Heinz-Harald Frentzen (Jordan-Mugen Honda) 1m15.328s - 30 laps
2 Rubens Barrichello (Ferrari) 1m15.471s - 31 laps
3 Ricardo Zonta (Jordan-Mugen Honda) 1m15.961s - 37 laps
4 Pedro de la Rosa (Arrows-AMT) 1m16.206s - 17 laps