Japanese GP Prost preview

Unlike between the last two flyaway races in the past years, the Prost Acer team flew back from Indianapolis to their headquarters in St Quentin en Yvelines, and concentrated on the elaboration of the 2002 chassis. Heinz-Harald Frentzen came at the factory last week and contributed to the team's work on the AP05 by sitting in the mock-up to improve the driving position. He then flew in advance to Japan in order to get acclimatised to the important time difference. Heinz-Harald is particularly looking forward to this race as his list of achievements at the Japanese Grand Prix speaks for itself : he succeeding in finishing 5 times in the points out of 7 participations (he ended up 8th in 95 and had to retire in the 2000 event). Tomas Enge, despite competing for the first time at the Japanese track, is looking forward to setting a good result there after having been able to complete the first two Formula One races of his career.

The Prost Acer team chose not to test last week ahead of the season's finale, but concentrated their efforts into analysing the problems faced at the start of the U.S. Grand Prix, as Henri Durand explains :

Henri Durand - Technical Director :

"The Suzuka circuit is one of the most technical and enjoyable track of the whole Formula One season. It has an interesting mixture of high, medium and slow speed corners and achieving a good chassis balance is crucial for competitiveness. It is traditionally fairly hard on tyres and rubber choice will be more important than ever. We trust Michelin will bring a competitive product as usual, and we will rely on their advice on how to make the best use of them. After Indianapolis, and its race which was almost decided for us at the start, we have paid particular attention to our start procedure and we hope to confirm that we have made some progress in this area. Nothing other than that is new on our car, and we count on our good reliability level to help us achieving a good result, as we look forward to finishing the 2001 season on a positive note."

-Prost-