Herbert flies on first outing with Arrows

The 36-year-old, who retired from Grand Prix Racing at the end of last season, has not driven a racing car for five months and completed his tentative first laps in an interim Arrows A21 on a wet Silverstone circuit this morning (Wednesday).

But the track had dried by the afternoon session, allowing Herbert to put in a fastest lap of 1m25.42s, closely followed by the Benetton of Mark Webber in second place.

"I feel good," said Herbert. " I'm not really comfortable with the seat so we're going to make a new one tonight, but so far, the systems we've been using seem much simpler than before [at Jaguar].

"I haven't driven for five months so it was both nice and weird to get back in the cockpit. I was quite surprised because I'm not as tired as I thought I would be. I'll probably be very stiff by the end of the week."

Another racer-turned-tester was at Silverstone, with Pedro de la Rosa having his first outing for the Jaguar team. The Spaniard managed to set the third fastest time in the only 2001 car present. De la Rosa lost his seat at Arrows to Brazilian Enrique Bernoldi last month and briefly courted a testing role with Prost GP before finally plumping for a move to the Big Cat.

"I'm just about getting back into proper driving mode," said de la Rosa, "and I have never jumped from one place to another so much as I have in the last few weeks.

"I'm still not fully comfortable with the seat, but otherwise everything in the cockpit is okay and the pedals are fine. We've got quite an intensive programme here and also at the next test in Barcelona after Malaysia."

Also present at Silverstone was the Williams-BMW of Marc Gene, who was carrying out component tests for use in Malaysia and managed to go fourth fastest.

Propping up the bottom of the time sheets was the interim Jaguar R1B of the Milton Keynes-based team's second test driver Tomas Scheckter. Testing continues tomorrow and a sole Jordan-Honda driven by Ricardo Zonta will be added to the list of runners.

Ferrari continued running at Fiorano with regular tester Luca Badoer for a second day today. Badoer concentrated on new electronic systems in a 2000-spec car and covered a total of 87 laps (17 on the short circuit), with a best time of 1m01.458s. Rubens Barrichello joins in tomorrow (Thursday) with a 2001-spec car.

Eschewing the delights of Silverstone, McLaren ploughed its lonely furrow at Magny-Cours. Test driver Alex Wurz did the driving duties and will continue until Friday.

Silverstone test, day one (unofficial times)

Johnny Herbert Arrows-AMT B 1m25.42s 47
Mark Webber Benetton-Renault M 1m25.79s 53
Pedro de la Rosa Jaguar M (2001 car) 1m26.65s 48
Mark Gene Williams-BMW M 1m27.07s 42
Tomas Scheckter Jaguar M 1m27.77s 38