Fast on Michelins

SAUBER conquered adverse weather conditions and rivarly from eight other teams to be the quickest car on each of the three days of testing. It is clear that the Michelin tyres are a good fit for the C23 and that World Champ Jacques Villeneuve has returned to form.

Race engineer Giampaolo Dall'Ara sums up the week. "The weather we experienced the last three days was not what you wish for testing, but I believe we were still able to cope with it pretty well. Because of those bad conditions we couldn´t run our programme as originally planned, but we moved our focus to more Michelin tyre work and in this way still learnt quite a lot. It also helped us to further gain knowledge of Jacques´ driving style, and for him it was a valuable time to acclimatise to the car and the team. Jacques and Felipe covered altogether more than 950 kilometres and we didn´t experience technical problems which speaks for reliability and consistency. Overall I´m happy with what we´ve done."

Today marked the team's final test of 2004. They will return to action from 14 to 16 January 2005 in Valencia after debuting the new C24 in Malaysia on 11 January.

P	Driver	Team	Engine	Car	Tyre	Best Lap	Gap
1	Villeneuve	SAUBER	PETRONAS	C23	M	1:28.347	-:--.---
2	Badoer	Ferrari	Ferrari	F2004	B	1:29.219	0.872
3	Gene	Ferrari	Ferrari	F2004	B	1:29.474	1.127
4	R Schumacher	Toyota	Toyota	TF104	M	1:29.528	1.181
5	Fisichella	Renault	Renault	Renault	M	1:29.829	1.482
6	Wurz	McLaren	Mercedes	MP4/19	M	1:30.16	1.813
7	Sato	BAR	Honda	BAR006	M	1:30.214	1.867
8	Klien	Red Bull	Cosworth	Interim	M	1:30.381	2.034
9	Bernoldi	BAR	Honda	BAR006	M	1:30.54	2.193
10	de la Rosa	McLaren	Mercedes	MP4/19	M	1:31.084	2.737
11	Doornbos	Jordan	Ford	EJ14	B	1:31.096	2.749
12	Rossiter	BAR	Honda	BAR006	M	1:31.201	2.854
13	Liuzzi	Red Bull	Cosworth	Interim	M	1:31.888	3.541
14	Montagny	Renault	Renault	Renault	M	1:31.942	3.595
15	Jani	Red Bull	Cosworth	Interim	M	1:32.7	4.353
16	Caroll	BAR	Honda	BAR006	M	1:33.557	5.210

For full 2005 pre-season test results click here.

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