Mugello test, day 2: Sato pushes on

After the heavy rain of Tuesday, the teams were greeted by light rain during the morning, but had dry conditions in the afternoon. Sato was the first man to go out on dry tyres just before lunch and the Japanese ace finished the day just three hundreths of a second behind the Barrichello and ahead of team regular Olivier Panis.

Ferrari number two Barrichello set a top time of 1m26.55s and completed 80 laps and a full Grand Prix distance for the Italian team. Sato, meanwhile caused three of the day's six red flags due to problems with a new anti-stall device, followed by an ECU failure and then finally he ended up beached in the gravel trap at the Correntaio corner.

Panis wound up third, driving the BAR003 that had been crashed by test driver Anthony Davidson yesterday (Tuesday). The Frenchman was more than a second slower than Sato and completed set-up and brake work.

Jean Alesi was fourth for the Jordan-Honda team, closely followed by a much-improved Andrea Piccini. The Formula 3000 ace completed 51 laps and outpaced Minardi stable mate Alex Yoong by almost two seconds. Yoong, who is to make his GP debut at Monza next weekend, finished sixth and was thwarted in his attempts to rack up more F1 miles by a recurring gearbox problem.

World champion Michael Schumacher is joining proceedings on Thursday to take over from Barrichello.

Ferrari test driver Luca Badoer completed 54 laps of component testing at the Scuderia's private Fiorano test track. He set a best time of 59.933s and completed 11 practice starts.


Rubens Barrichello, Ferrari B, 1m26.55s, 79 laps
Takuma Sato, BAR-Honda B, 1m26.58s, 53 laps
Olivier Panis, BAR-Honda B, 1m27.77s, 58 laps
Jean Alesi, Jordan-Honda B, 1m27.63s, 48 laps
Andrea Piccini, Minardi-European, M, 1m29.21s, 51 laps
Alex Yoong, Minardi-European, M 1m31.04s, 23 laps