Tuesday September 16th, 2003

The McLaren-Mercedes team dominated the first day of this week's testing at the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona, Spain.

The five drivers in action at the Spanish circuit, however, were covered by less than eight tenths of a second.

McLaren's Championship challenger Kimi Raikkonen was the fastest man today, posting a best time of 1:17.118 over a massive 105 laps. The Finn, who was at the wheel of the MP4-17D chassis, outpaced his Scottish teammate David Coulthard by less than three hundreds of a second as the British squad enjoyed a busy day of work in preparation for the United States Grand Prix.

McLaren's test driver Alexander Wurz completed the Woking team's domination with the third fastest time after 71 laps. The Renault and Toyota teams also kicked off their Barcelona test today, both working with one driver each.

Franck Montagny was in charge of testing duties for Renault. The Frenchman, together with Raikkonen, was the busiest man today with 105 laps. Montagny had a productive session and finished slightly over six tenths of a second behind Raikkonen.

Brazilian Cristiano da Matta also had a busy day at the wheel of the Toyota TF103, and he was slowest after 101 laps of the Catalan circuit.

"For the first of my two days in Barcelona this week, we completed a massive number of laps with no real problems," said da Matta. "As usual with testing, we are putting all of our efforts into preparing ourselves as well as possible for the upcoming races.

"I have never driven at either Indianapolis or Suzuka and they are the final races of the season, so our testing work this week will be very important."

Testing at Barcelona will continue tomorrow with the three teams again in action.

Today's times:

Pos  Driver        Team-Engine         Tyres  Time     Laps
 1.   Raikkonen     McLaren-Mercedes     (M)  1:17.118  105
 2.   Coulthard     McLaren-Mercedes     (M)  1:17.147   93
 3.   Wurz          McLaren-Mercedes     (M)  1:17.220   71
 4.   Montagny      Renault              (M)  1:17.785  105
 5.   da Matta      Toyota               (M)  1:17.867  101

All Timing Unofficial