Panis sets unofficial track record

The team was also in action at Silverstone, where Anthony Davidson, Patrick Lemarie and Jacques Villeneuve worked on a variety of programmes ranging from tyre testing, set-up work and development part evaluation. Villeneuve set the team's best time of 1m23.791s on the second of the three test days.

"Generally, we've made good progress at both circuits and have been able to explore some aspects of the revised car for Canada," said technical director Geoff Willis. "We still have some work to do into the weekend at Paul Ricard and we will continue to understand the car more as we use it in Montreal. We're pleased with what we have achieved so far though."

Minardi was also in action this week, with test driver Matteo Bobbi spending two days at Vairano in Italy. The Italian, who won the open round of this year's Formula Nissan 2000 series, tested a variety of nose/front wings designs that the team hopes will boost its competitiveness at next weekend's Canadian GP.

"I feel pretty satisfied with the work done over the past two days," said Bobbi. "Both sessions were trouble-free and turned out to be very productive. We experienced a small problem with the clutch this morning, but that was cured in a very short time.

"Personally, I'm learning more about the car all the time and my confidence is increasing as a result. I am now more familiar with the braking points, the power delivery and the speed in the corners, and can notice the improvement compared with the first time I drove the F1 car, in Valencia."