Spanish GP BAR Friday notes

Circuit de Catalunya, Barcelona - Friday 27th April 2001 - mechanical problems conspired to slow The Lucky Strike British American Racing Honda team during the morning and afternoon free practice in Barcelona as they prepare for Sunday's Spanish Grand Prix.

Jacques Villeneuve: "We have had quite a few problems during practice mainly with the traction control system. We are not fully set up with it yet and we did not manage to get on top of it today. We lost a fair amount of time but I am not that unhappy because we were fairly acceptable on lap times. Oliver also took fuel out and the car seems to be competitive with low fuel so that's encouraging."

Olivier Panis: "We had a couple of small problems to start with but we worked through them and I am happy with the end result. Today we focused on our set-up and making changes in preparation for Sunday. The balance of the car is good but now we need to look at the problems that we had this morning and to improve on the set-up again tomorrow. It was a good final position during the afternoon session but we still have a lot of work to do."

Craig Pollock:
"We came out of a very bad first session where there appeared to be an engine problem with Jacques car so the result was that he did very few laps. During the second session both cars seemed to be relatively competitive within the best of the rest. Clearly we still have some work to do to catch up with the front runners but we feel that we are heading in the right direction and are optimistic of a strong qualifying position tomorrow."

Malcolm Oastler:
"We had a few too many little problems which delayed us today but we overcame them to get the cars running. Otherwise, it was a normal Friday for us. We are reasonably happy with our pace, it's a bit better than we have recently achieved on a Friday, so thing's look fairly good for tomorrow."