Minardi Valencia Thursday afternoon testing notes 2002--02-07

KL Minardi Asiatech's Malaysian driver, Alex Yoong completed the most number of laps yesterday (Thursday) in Minardi's third day in Valencia and felt pleased with his improved physical condition as compared to last year.

Yoong's manager, Simon Munger, who was present with Yoong in Valencia said, "Alex's condition is superb. This afternoon he did a 35 lap uninterrupted race simulation run with impressive consistency. His fastest lap for the afternoon was achieved at the very last lap which, to me, is darn impressive. He has verified his improved physical condition."

Yoong still fresh after 81 laps of running said, "I have never felt this good after such a sustained run. I am pretty pleased with my time today since it was only 2 seconds off the PS02 pace even though my PS01 was running with high fuel loads and old tyres all day. I am looking forward to my turn with the PS02 tomorrow. "

Team-mate, Mark Webber finished the day running 49 laps with a fastest time of 1m 16.651s set in the morning. He couldn't get into a rhythm due to the many red flag interruptions, "Today was probably the hardest we’ve experienced during this test, as the team had a couple of small technical problems with the car and there were a lot of red flags and interruptions. It made it difficult to get into a rhythm and do some decent running. In the end, though, we did manage to put some more useful laps on the new car today. We have another day of testing here in Valencia tomorrow, and then we’re looking forward to the Barcelona test next week, where we’ll have more equipment at our disposal."

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