Day 4: McNish sets Monza pace

Antonio Pizzonia, who was quickest on the three previous days, was just over a tenth down on the Scot. He also lost track time with an engine problem, but it was late in the day and by then he had already done 77 laps of tyre evaluation work.

Eddie Irvine was third quickest for Jaguar and the Ulsterman was happy that the team was finally starting to get a handle on its revised R3.

"It was a very good day for us today," said Irvine. "The car now has reasonably good balance for the first time this year. The handling is pretty good too. There's still a lot of work to do, but it was a good day."

BAR's Olivier Panis worked on set-up for the Italian GP and also did some engine mapping work for the next race in Magny-Cours. Anthony Davidson completed his work on the Athena chassis.

Over in Valencia, Sebastien Bourdais was given a full day's running behind the wheel of an Arrows and the F3000 championship leader did an impressive job. He covered 71 laps in total, which equates to around a race distance, setting a best time of 1m13.22s. This compares well to Heinz-Harald Frentzen's best of 1m12.505s from earlier in the week, and was good enough to put the Frenchman ahead of Marc Gene's Williams.

Renault test driver Fernando Alonso was the quickest of the three cars present, lapping the twisty Spanish track in 1m11.87s.

With two races on successive weekends followed by the August testing ban, this was the last opportunity for teams to extensively test their cars until after the Belgian GP.


Allan McNish Toyota M 1m23.012s 21
Antonio Pizzonia Williams-BMW M 1m23.121s 77
Eddie Irvine Jaguar M 1m23.580s 65
Mika Salo Toyota M 1m23.771s 64
Olivier Panis BAR-Honda B 1m24.035s
Anthony Davidson BAR-Honda B 1m24.624s


Fernando Alonso Renault M 1m11.87s 48
Sebastien Bourdais Arrows-Cosworth B 1m13.22s 71
Marc Gene Williams-BMW M 1m13.35s 108

M = Michelin
B = Bridgestone