Sauber happy despite weather disruptions

'Because of poor weather earlier in the week, we had to focus four days of work into one today,' explained test team manager Jacky Eeckelaert.

'Everything proceeded on schedule and we did not go for lap times as we were running high fuel loads and race configuration all day.'

Most of the other teams present set their best times while testing qualifying set-ups, so Sauber will be encouraged to be just 1.3s off the pace in the circumstances.

The Swiss team has had a spectacularly mixed start to 2000. A fighting drive to sixth in Australia by Mika Salo was negated when the Finn was disqualified for a technical infringement, then neither car started in Brazil after wing failures in practice forced the team to withdraw on safety grounds.

Both cars were extremely competitive at Imola however, unlucky to qualify as low as tenth (Diniz) and twelfth (Salo) before Salo chased Jacques Villeneuve home for sixth in the race.