The F1 circus had a dramatic weekend: Williams smashed the lap record at Valencia, Ferrari did the same at Fiorano. David Coulthard rolled his McLaren and Heinz-Harald Frentzen lost the rear wing on his Arrows – twice!
The F1 circus had a dramatic weekend: Williams smashed the lap record at Valencia, Ferrari did the same at Fiorano. David Coulthard rolled his McLaren and Heinz-Harald Frentzen lost the rear wing on his Arrows – twice!
Williams BMW may have turned in relatively unimpressive lap times at Valencia last week, but the team rebounded to shatter the track record at the Spanish circuit on Sunday. Juan-Pablo Montoya became the first F1 driver to break the 1m 11s barrier around the twisty track, setting a best lap of 1m10,977s.
The Colombian led team-mate Ralf Schumacher by almost a second, and his record-breaking performance was witnessed by team bosses Frank Williams and Patrick Head, “who had flown in to pay their respects to the Williams mechanics, some of whom have been on the road since the start of the year”, Autosport reported.
BAR’s Olivier Panis improved on Jacques Villeneuve’s best time from the previous day, but the Frenchman was 1,6s off Montoya’s pace. He also suffered his fifth engine failure of the week. Villeneuve was fourth quickest, but a broken gearbox ended his session just before lunch.
Meanwhile, four-time world champion Michael Schumacher broke the track record at Fiorano in Ferrari‘s new F2002. The German, who gave the car its first shakedown on Saturday, recorded a time of 58,620s and covered a total of 67 laps.
"The new car’s debut was very promising," Schumacher said. "I had a good feeling from the first moment I was driving the F2002.”
“If we have two weeks of testing without problems we will start the season with the F2002, but if not we will stick with the old one," said Ferrari’s technical director Ross Brawn.
In contrast, McLaren Mercedes’s weekend almost ended in disaster. David Coulthard was lucky to walk away uninjured after rolling his McLaren in a testing crash at the Barcelona circuit in Spain. The Scot went off at the first corner – during a private test session – when his left rear Michelin tyre deflated.
Coulthard had just started a race simulation when the accident happened. The McLaren spun and skipped across the gravel trap on the outside of the corner. It then dug in, flipped on to its roll-over bar and back over on to its wheels.
The car only suffered minor damage in the incident, and Coulthard was able to extract himself from the cockpit unaided. Michelin has since said that it will thoroughly check the tyre to find out what went wrong.
"The tyre will be examined for penetration and other problems back at our HQ in Clermont-Ferrand, and we should have a better idea what caused the problems on Monday or Tuesday. We don’t know yet what caused it, but it looks like a puncture. It’s a bit early to say anything yet,” quoted a Michelin spokesman as saying Heinz-Harald Frentzen may have only become a part of the Arrows F1 team on Thursday, but he has already been in two big crashes.
On Friday, at Valencia, Frentzen was lucky to see out the end of the day after twice suffering rear wing failures with the new A23.
The German emerged uninjured after the two incidents, both of which took place at Turn One, where cars reach over 290 km/h. Despite this, Frentzen still carded the fifth best time of the day.
“I was pleased with the progress we made this morning,” said Arrows technical director Mike Coughlan. “So it was a shame we had the problems with losing the rear wing. The good news is that this has happened now, rather than in Melbourne. We will rectify the situation before we continue testing. Generally speaking, though, I’m encouraged by what we’ve achieved so far.”