By Huw Alban
April 29 2002

Heinz-Harald Frentzen wrapped up the team's 3 day test programme today at Silverstone. The weather broke in the afternoon giving the test team the opportunity to work on wet setups, and were able to match Jordan and Sauber for wet pace. According to trackside observers, OrangeArrows were quick to get out on track today once the test officially opened. The team enjoyed a relatively incident free day (for them at least), but the available track time was reduced slightly by a number of incidents involving other teams and a squally rain shower during the afternoon.

Graham Taylor, Chief Engineer, spoke to the official Arrows website after the session. "It was good to complete the test’s full schedule today and although we had some down-time late this morning due to a gearbox problem, we were able to fix that and get some really valuable data for Barcelona next weekend. We mainly focused on traction control and launch control today which is instantly beneficial to us.

Although we didn’t complete as many laps as yesterday, the signs were encouraging. We were running the car on race fuel loads, so the times weren’t as quick as earlier in the test, but after the downpour at lunch, we were very quick in the wet. Even when the track began to dry later in the afternoon, we still had good pace, setting similar times to the Saubers and the Jordans.

I think it’s fair to say we now go to Barcelona benefiting from some good testing mileage and hopefully we’ll have ironed out some of the glitches that we had at the start of the season."

Thursday's times from Silverstone:

1. Ralf Schumacher -Williams -1:22.142s - 42 laps
2. Jenson Button -Renault -1:22.295s - 24 laps
3. Olivier Panis -BAR -1:22.377 - 45 laps
4. Marc Gene -Williams - 1:22.406 - 54 laps
5. Giancarlo Fisichella - Jordan - 1:22.524 - 54
6. Takuma Sato - Jordan -1:22.890 - 47 laps
7. Jacques Villeneuve - BAR - 1:22.970 - 50 laps
8. Felipe Massa Sauber - 1:23.375 - 45 laps
9. Pedro de La Rosa Jaguar - 1:23.678 - 27 laps
10. H.H.Frentzen - Arrows - 1:24.630 - 32 laps
11. Mark Webber - Minardi - 1:26.203 - 21 laps