Drivers enthuse as BAR make a step forward

By Phil Huff
April 8 2005

After a hugely successful test at Barcelona, where Jenson Button broke the lap record set in 2004 by Takuma Sato, all four team drivers are enthusiastic about the future.

Jenson Button ran 250 laps over two days, setting his record breaking time late on day two. "We focused mostly on reliability and aerodynamic work, trying out the new parts on the car, whilst the other car was doing all the tyre testing," said the Englishman. "The test went reasonably well and we have made a step forward. It's difficult to know how big a step in relation to everybody else but we've tried lots of different parts on the car and think we've found the best way forward. It was nice to break the lap record at the end of the day on Thursday."

"It was a very good test this week," enthused Takuma Sato, who was driving his new car, chassis number 5, following suggestions that his original race car was suffering some chassis problems. "We did a lot of working for the aerodynamics and tyres. Mainly I did tyre work on my first day and it's good to see we made some progress with our performance and we are up on the top of the timesheets. Today unfortunately it was raining but we did some encouraging wet tyre testing. It was a bit of a mixture as we had dry runs as well so we tried some different set-ups."

Third driver Anthony Davidson ran for just one day, completing an astonishing 143 laps, the most that any BAR driver has run at Barcelona in one day, and equivalent to nearly 2 1/4 Grand Prix distances.

"We concentrated on tyre testing," explained Anthony, "looking at the option and prime compounds for the Spanish Grand Prix. We got some positive results and the car was handling well all day. I posted a pretty good time towards the end of the session so overall it was a positive day for me."

Test driver Enrique Bernoldi got his first taste of the BAR 007, after spending the winter in the 05 Concept. "I had two short runs yesterday on old tyres before starting this morning in the dry conditions," said Bernoldi. "We started on warm-up runs but the rain came down quite early so we got into our wet test programme which we managed to complete on the intermediate tyres.

"The new car felt good to drive, it was a better feeling than the Concept car."

The team now move to the Paul Ricard circuit, where testing resumes next week.