BAR suffer mixed fortunes

Ricardo Zonta, who suffered a mechanical failure in warm-up for the Brazilian Grand Prix, was able to learn the circuit (on which he has not previously driven an F1 car) and work on the set up.

Team leader Jacques Villeneuve, on the other hand suffered a myriad of technical niggles which restricted his running in both morning and afternoon sessions.

"It hasn't been a good day," admitted Villeneuve, who holds the Imola lap record. "It now means we will have to treat tomorrow like Friday in terms of setting the car up.

"I don't know whether the problem in the afternoon's session was the engine or gearbox, but hopefully we've got all the bad luck out of the way today."

Andy Green, the team's chief designer agreed with his driver, but was pleased with Zonta's progress.

"It's been disappointing really," said Green, "particularly with Jacques losing virtually the whole day's track time. Ricardo spent most of the day working on his race set up and made good progress though, so the goal for tomorrow will be to make up the lost ground with Jacques and give both drivers the best chance possible to qualify well."

Zonta concurred with the designer, saying: "My lap times were good in the morning, and we particularly improved in the slow corners.

"I'm reasonably happy with the balance of the car, but on my best lap today I made a mistake that cost six tenths of a second, so we should have been higher up. We want to do better tomorrow."