BAR Fastest on the Final Day of Testing at Barcelona

The BAR duo of Jenson Button and Takuma Sato ended the final day of testing at Barcelona fastest, the Briton ahead of his Japanese teammate by some two tenths of a second and half a second faster than Ferrari's World Champion Michael Schumacher.

After an overnight of heavy rain, testing at Barcelona ran on a damp track for the entire morning session, until more rain fell in the afternoon. Despite the weather conditions, the six teams testing at the track continued preparations for the San Marino Grand Prix, in two weeks time.

BAR ran a black-liveried car, testing various aerodynamic solutions, including different rear wing configurations. Both Button and Sato switched between their normal livery-coloured car and the black one.

At the end of today's session, Jenson Button said: "The test has been a bit difficult this week due to the intermittent weather conditions. It would change from dry to wet throughout the day, so it was very difficult to do any real testing. Having said that, I was able to test a couple of different Michelin tyre compounds this afternoon and the information we gathered is very positive. Fortunately we have another test next week and we will be hoping to maximise our time there before heading to Imola for the next race."

Button's teammate, Takuma Sato, added: "This has been a good test overall; it's just a shame that the weather was so inconsistent over the last couple of days. However, we have completed a lot of tyre testing, which is very good preparation for the Spanish Grand Prix, and have done some good work with Honda on the new engine. The aero developments for Imola also look very promising. This is really the first time that I have driven the B·A·R Honda 006 chassis in Barcelona, apart from a few laps after the launch. I have always driven the '04 Concept car since then but the new chassis worked really well and is very fast and stable here."

Mark Ellis, BAR's Chief Test Engineer, commented: "This has been a very productive week of testing, despite losing a day to the weather on Thursday. We have completed almost 2000kms this week with only one car for three days and two cars today, as well as nearly 1100kms of wet tyre testing at Valencia on Wednesday and Thursday. We have successfully tested new aero components for the San Marino Grand Prix, tyres for the Spanish Grand Prix, as well as a new specification engine from Honda. All three drivers have run this week producing extremely competitive lap times and the car has demonstrated excellent reliability. We will continue our developments next week at Paul Ricard and Vairano, ahead of the first European Grand Prix at Imola in two weeks' time."

And Shuhei Nakamoto, Honda Racing Development's Engineering Director, concluded: "We've had two tests this week as we push to keep up the momentum from the good results in the last two races. Engine reliability was good at the Valencia test, where we learned a lot about Michelin's new wet weather tyre. All three drivers participated in the Barcelona test, where we covered a lot of mileage and made progress with tyre selection for the Spanish GP. We had a problem on one engine which we will address at two more tests next week at Paul Ricard and Vairano. We are looking forward to continuing the fight with the other leading teams in the European season."

Ferrari's Schumacher, who set the fastest time in yesterday's session, ran alongside teammate Rubens Barrichello, who set the eighth fastest time of the day. The two drivers worked on a set-up and tyre test programme.

Schumacher's younger brother, Ralf, managed to run only five laps before withdrawing from the testing due to back pain. He was replaced by Williams's test driver Marc Gene, who covered a total of 104 laps and set the sixth fastest time.

Williams also continued testing IRL champion Scott Dixon, the New Zealander setting the ninth fastest time and running a total of 63 laps.

Final driver on the timesheets was Sauber's Giancarlo Fisichella, the team having completed a three day session. "Today's session could not begin until 10:00 am because of a local holiday, and the track did not dry out enough to use Bridgestone dry weather tyres until 11:30," commented Mike Krack, Fisichella's race engineer.

"After that we were able to do some more tyre testing for Bridgestone, evaluating the compound for the Spanish Grand Prix here in May. We also evaluated some brake materials and cooling, and were able to make some aerodynamic improvements on the braking side. It started raining again at 4 pm, however, by which time we in any case only had five laps' time left on the engine, so we stopped early.

"We didn't go for times today but believe we were able to make a good tyre choice. Having struggled with a mechanical problem on the first day, then had rain yesterday, today was the best day of the test in terms of working through our programme."

Today's times:

Pos Driver Team-Engine Time Laps 1. Button BAR-Honda (M) 1:15.079 73 2. Sato BAR-Honda (M) 1:15.304 93 3. M.Schumacher Ferrari (B) 1:15.625 76 4. de la Rosa McLaren-Mercedes (M) 1:15.812 73 5. Webber Jaguar-Cosworth (M) 1:15.886 120 6. Gene Williams-BMW (M) 1:15.948 104 7. Wurz McLaren-Mercedes (M) 1:16.268 61 8. Barrichello Ferrari (B) 1:16.515 29 9. Dixon Williams-BMW (M) 1:16.621 63 10. R.Schumacher Williams-BMW (M) 1:17.191 5 11. Fisichella Sauber-Petronas (B) 1:17.244 78 Note: the full laptimes from Barcelona will not be available today, due to a technical problem at the circuit

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