Ralf and Heidfeld suffer testing shunts

Williams completed a three-day test at Estoril yesterday (Sunday). Antonio Pizzonia was the team's sole driver in a 2001-spec car after Ralf Schumacher badly damaged one of this year's FW24 the previous day. The German driver was unharmed in the impact, which the team believes was not caused by driver error.

The damaged car was a new chassis that the team had taken to Portugal for the German to shakedown. His best time - set on Saturday - was 1m18.409s, which was two tenths down on Pizzonia's pace in the FW23.


Despite announcing that it will race last year's car at the opening race of the season Ferrari continued to test the F2002 on Saturday, with Michael Schumacher covering 50 laps of Mugello while working on its set up. Windy conditions made it difficult for the team to draw many conclusions, but the world champion's best time of 1m22.551s was two seconds quicker than Nick Heidfeld's Sauber managed on the same day.

Schumacher is joined by Rubens Barrichello and Luca Badoer in a three-car test at Imola today (Monday), where the old and new cars will go head-to-head.


Sauber's testing plans were spoiled by a big crash for Nick Heidfeld that required his C21 to be sent back to the factory in Switzerland for repairs.

"The car was handling very well even though we didn't do anything special to tune it for the conditions," he said. "I was really hoping for good conditions so that we could do the final preparations for Melbourne, but when the car oversteered in Turn Six this afternoon I didn't catch it in time and spun. I'm very disappointed."

Felipe Massa will continue at the track on his own today and will be hoping to improve on his best time of the test so far, which was a 1m24.984s.


Both Mika Salo and Allan McNish drove as Toyota completed its pre-season testing at Paul Ricard. Poor weather restricted the amount of work the team was able to complete, with heavy rain on Saturday making the day almost a complete wash out.

"We had some really bad weather, making it impossible to drive," said McNish, who will make his GP debut in Melbourne. "We were able to do some small tuning work in preparation for our first ever Grand Prix in Melbourne and we additionally worked on launch and traction control."