Friday February 18th, 2000

Jordan's Heinz-Harald Frentzen topped the timesheets on the second day of this week's testing at Barcelona. The German outpaced second fastest driver, McLaren's David Coulthard, by just eight hundredths of a second, and was half a second faster than teammate Jarno Trulli, who ended up fourth fastest of the day, behind Jaguar's Eddie Irvine.

World Champion Mika Hakkinen had the most number of laps today, the Finn ran 90 laps, including an untroubled race distance, but could only set the fifth fastest time of the day, almost a second behind Frentzen.

The Arrows team, which set the new testing lap record for Barcelona last week, probably had the least successful day today. With Jos Verstappen at the wheel, the team attempted to run a race distance when they were thwarted by the failure of a hydraulic oil line. While normally only a minor problem, the resulting oil leak led to a small fire which did sufficient damage to stop the team for the day.

Repairs to the A21 are expected to be completed overnight to allow Verstappen to continue the test program tomorrow, while the second A21 chassis is now on route to Barcelona and will allow Pedro de la Rosa to join the test as soon as it arrives.

Today's times:

Pos  Driver      Team                Time     Laps
 1.  Frentzen    Jordan-Mugen Honda  1:22.07   42 
 2.  Coulthard   McLaren-Mercedes    1:22.15   67 
 3.  Irvine      Jaguar-Cosworth     1:22.51   37 
 4.  Trulli      Jordan-Mugen Honda  1:22.57   29 
 5.  Hakkinen    McLaren-Mercedes    1:22.93   90 
 6.  Herbert     Jaguar-Cosworth     1:23.12   41 
 7.  Gene        Minardi-Fondmetal   1:24.28   30 
 8.  Verstappen  Arrows-Supertec     1:25.05   17 
 9.  Alesi       Prost-Peugeot       1:25.18   32 
10.  Mazzacane   Minardi-Fondmetal   1:25.65   28 

The 2000 Barcelona lap record is 1:20.230 (P. de la Rosa);
the 1999 Barcelona lap record is 1:20.540 (R. Barrichello)