Valencia test, day 4: DC on top despite problems

The McLarens of Coulthard and test driver Alex Wurz caused all four of the day's red flags with mechanical problems at the twisty Spanish circuit, revealing a potential chink in the Silver Arrows armour.

DC moved ever closer to breaking into the 1m12s barrier in the 2001 MP4-16, but stopped twice during the day's running. The first problem was a water leak, which left much of the Mercedes V10's coolant on the track. The car's engine was replaced, but the Scot subsequently stopped again in the afternoon session.

Wurz, who finished the day third, was driving an interim MP4-15K fitted with a 2001 engine - believed to be capable of almost 20,000 rpm. The Austrian also stopped twice with mechanical problems, one of which came after the car's engine note dropped on the pit straight and Wurz came to a halt at the following corner.

Jarno Trulli continued to develop the Jordan-Honda EJ11 and set an encouraging second fastest time, albeit 0.77s behind Coulthard.

"I'm trying to work on the set-up," said Trulli, "and we're having no problems with the reliability, but I just don't know how fast the car is capable of going."

Trulli's team mate Heinz-Harald Frentzen had a less successful day and despite setting the fourth fastest time, the German experienced continued overheating problems.

Luciano Burti was once again the quickest of the two Jaguars and team mate Eddie Irvine, fresh from appearing at the Grand Prix Party at the Albert Hall in London last night, was at the bottom of the time sheets for the second consecutive day, almost three seconds behind Coulthard.

Enrique Bernoldi took sixth place in a 2000-spec Arrows while team mate Jos Verstappen developed the 2001 car. The Dutchman finished 0.25s ahead of Irvine in ninth and believes there is still along way to go with the new car. He said: "The car is ok but we have lots and lots of work to do. We are working with the set-up, but we need to get to know the car better."

The young Sauber pairing of Kimi Raikkonen and Nick Heidfeld continued to run each other close and finished the day within 0.02s of each other. Raikkonen was scheduled to complete three endurance runs of 25 laps each, but was halted on the third by one of the McLaren red flags.

After shaking down a fourth new chassis for the Swiss team yesterday, Heidfeld was due to move on to a tyre programme today, but was prevented from doing so when instructed to return to the pits after telemetry-watching engineers spotted a problem with the car's engine.

"I feel we had a very difficult day," said Heidfeld. "It was lucky that we spotted the oil leak this morning, but it's a shame that we lost valuable track time. The team invested a lot of time to finalise all the set-ups we worked through today. We made progress."

Testing concludes tomorrow.


David Coulthard, McLaren-Mercedes B 1m13.27s, 40
Jarno Trulli, Jordan-Honda B 1m14.04s, 80
Alexander Wurz, McLaren-Mercedes B (2000) 1m14.08s, 75
Heinz-Harald Frentzen, Jordan-Honda B 1m14.13s, 98
Luciano Burti, Jaguar-Cosworth M 1m14.38s, 45
Enrique Bernoldi, Arrows-AMT B (2000) 1m14.98s, 69
Kimi Raikkonen, Sauber-Petronas B 1m15.23s, 106
Nick Heidfeld, Sauber-Petronas B 1m15.25s, 47
Jos Verstappen, Arrows-AMT B 1m15.70s, 36
Eddie Irvine, Jaguar-Cosworth M 1m16.05s, 75
M - Michelin
B - Bridgestone
NB: all cars 2001 specification unless specified