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Honda F1 free practice from Barcelona

6 May 2000

FIA Formula 1 World Championship - Round 5
Spanish Grand Prix, Barcelona - Friday Free Practice

BAR HONDA WORKS ON SPANISH SET-UP AND DEVELOPMENT
Friday 5 May 2000

This afternoon's free practice session for Sunday's Spanish Grand Prix
provided the Lucky Strike Reynard BAR Honda team with an important
opportunity to evaluate some new aerodynamic elements on the BAR Honda
002. A very dusty track, however, courtesy of the recent rainfall on the
Circuit de Catalunya and the morning's support race activity, presented
the teams with far different conditions than those experienced in testing
last week. Some drivers elected to remain in their garages for much of the
day as a means of preserving their tyres and were happy to watch as their
rivals' track activity helped to clean the tarmac.

Jacques Villeneuve and Ricardo Zonta were eager to complete as many laps
as possible to experiment with the new parts and revised set-ups. Initial
signs of progress with the new rear wing and modified turning vanes were
encouraging and the Honda RA000E engine again ran faultlessly all day.
Both drivers missed out on valuable track time in the first hour, however,
when they were afflicted by identical losses of hydraulic pressure, a
problem that the team is confident has since been solved.

Ricardo Zonta	Position: 17th	1min 24.461sec
"All the hard work that we had done last week in testing was worthless
this morning because the track was so dirty. The settings that we thought
would give us a good balance here provided very little grip and the heat
did not help either. We did manage a constructive back-to-back evaluation
of the Bridgestone tyre compounds, which gave us some positive
conclusions, but we still have a lot of work to do tomorrow before
qualifying."

Jacques Villeneuve	Position: 21st	1min 25.166sec
"We were trying new parts and a different set-up today, but the time we
lost in the first session could be very important later in the weekend. We
will probably have to be more conservative tomorrow, simply because we
have not had enough time to develop the work that we started this morning."

Takefumi Hosaka - Managing Director, Honda R&D	
"We are using a further evolution of the Silverstone specification engine
this weekend. Gradually we are generating more power and at the same time
improving the fuel consumption levels. We were surprised by the problems
we had today and were disappointed that we did not find the best settings
for the car. We must see how much we can improve tomorrow."

Jordan Mugen Honda driver Jarno Trulli followed up his excellent points
finish at Silverstone two week's ago with the fourth fastest time team of
the day. Trulli was just 0.6 seconds behind the quickest time of the day,
that of Michael Schumacher, while Heinz-Harald Frentzen was ninth, the
German concentrating on set-up work for the coming weekend.