Valencia test, day 1: Hakkinen sets pace
Double world champion Mika Hakkinen set an encouraging pace in the 2001 McLaren-Mercedes to top the time sheets on the first open day of testing at Valencia since the Woking team's launch last week
McLaren has been testing in isolation at the twisty Spanish circuit all week and was today (Saturday) joined by Arrows and Jaguar. The MP4-16 suffered an embarrassing first few laps in front of the world's press at the launch on Wednesday when the car suffered a clutch failure. There were no such problems today, however, with Hakkinen's best time just 0.84s behind the Finn's best lap set in a 2000 car three weeks ago.
McLaren test driver Alex Wurz finished in second spot 0.3s behind Hakkinen and the sole Jaguar R2 of Luciano Burti took third.
Arrows arrived at the circuit straight from an abandoned test at Estoril where low cloud and fog prevented any running. The Leafield-based team had two cars present for drivers Jos Verstappen and Enrique Bernoldi.
Verstappen put more development miles on the 2001 A22 while new boy Bernoldi continued to pound round in the AMT-powered interim A21 chassis. The Brazilian finished in fourth while his Dutch team mate propped up the bottom of the time sheets almost two seconds behind Hakkinen in fifth.
Testing continues tomorrow and the Jordan-Honda team are due to arrive with a brace of EJ11s on Monday.
At Mugello, Ferrari persevered with the development of its F2001 with Rubens Barrichello at the wheel for the second day in a row. The Brazilian was scheduled to complete an endurance run, but continued rain meant the world champions had to make do with 25 laps of set up work.
Barrichello again drove the new car on both full wet and intermediate rubber and set a best time 1m32.655s. The Ferrari number two will continue tomorrow.
Mika Hakkinen McLaren-Mercedes B 1m14.66s
Alex Wurz McLaren-Mercedes B 1m14.97s
Luciano Burti Jaguar M 1m15.99s
Enrique Bernoldi Arrows-AMT (2000 car) B 1m16.47s
Jos Verstappen Arrows-AMT B 1m16.50s
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