Tuesday January 4th, 2000

The first testing of 2000 got underway in Barcelona today, with only four teams present on the circuit, which saw overcast conditions and brief patches of sunshine.

Rubens Barrichello was back in action for Ferrari to continue engine and component testing for the new car, which is due to be completed at the end of January. Barrichello came to Barcelona from Brazil where he spent the holidays recovering from a minor operation to remove excess bone from an old rib injury.

He ran 46 laps on Saturday to set the quickest time of the day of 1:22.244 seconds, 1.6 seconds quicker than his closest rival, Jacques Villeneuve. His only incident of the day was a spin at the first corner, but without any damage to the car.

Villeneuve was running the new BAR-Honda for the second time at the circuit, the Canadian only completing 32 laps due to electrical problems with the gearbox selection system.

Pedro Diniz also had electrical problems with the 1999 Sauber, with which he was carrying out component testing for the new car. He did only 25 laps with a best of 1:24.044 secs.

It was a similar story for Stephan Sarrazin, who was carrying out the testing for the Prost team. Electrical troubles saw him run only 14 laps for the day, with a best time 1:24.493 secs.

After a long drive from England, following an initial troubled shakedown in Silverstone, the new Jaguar team were too late to join the test on Saturday, but plan to have two of their new 2000 cars running on Sunday for both Irvine and Herbert.

Testing will finish on Monday evening, with a high possibility of rain forecast for the final day.

Today's times:

Pos  Driver       Team             Time      Laps
 1.  Barrichello  Ferrari          1:22.244   46 
 2.  Villeneuve   BAR-Honda        1:23.821   32 
 3.  Diniz        Sauber-Petronas  1:24.044   25 
 4.  Sarrazin     Prost-Peugeot    1:24.493   14