Van de Poele fastest in first practice

The Belgian's lap of 1:47.739 lowered the track record from Nigel Mansell's best, set in testing yesterday, by more than one a half seconds, as the cooler conditions allowed for quicker laptimes.

What was surprising in the session, however, was the closeness of the drivers. Van de Poele's best lap was just 0.035 seconds quicker than the next best of Christian Danner with just two seconds covering the top 12 runners.

By comparison, three and a half seconds covered the same amount of positions in qualifying for last November's inaugural race, on the much shorter Kyalami track.

Mansell ended up third quickest overall after being the pace setter at the start of the session, ahead of Hans Stuck and Eddie Cheever. Pierluigi Martini just edged Jan Lammers for the sixth fastest time.

Rene Arnoux was nearly five seconds off van de Poele's best, however it was the Frenchman's first session of the weekend. He did not participate in yesterday's test session because he was travelling to Qatar.

Pos Driver        Time
 1. Van de Poele  1:47.739
 2. Danner        1:47.774
 3. Mansell       1:48.093
 4. Stuck         1:48.146
 5. Cheever       1:48.343
 6. Martini       1:48.359
 7. Lammers       1:48.370
 8. De Cesaris    1:48.481
 9. Warwick       1:48.538
10. Patrese       1:49.389
11. Fittipaldi    1:49.466
12. Johansson     1:49.747
13. Salazar       1:50.417
14. Tambay        1:51.654
15. Arnoux        1:52.535

All Timing Unofficial