By Huw Alban
April 29 2002

The Barcelona circuit is well known to the Formula 1 circus as a great deal of the pre-season testing is held at the circuit. The track is a combination of straights and fast corners with a couple of hard braking areas, with a bumpy surface, and the wear on the drivers and the cars can be very tough The OrangeArrows team had an encouraging test at Silverstone last week, with Heinz-Harald Frentzen using his experience in developing the A23. The German likes the Catalunya circuit, and is looking forward to the race weekend.

"I like Barcelona a lot. The city and it's people are great and it's a nice country," Frentzen said in the teams pre Grand Prix press release.

"Obviously as one of the main winter testing tracks, it's a circuit that the drivers know well so it does give you a head start when it comes to racing here, but nevertheless, it is a demanding track. It is quite fast with some quick corners, which means you need to find a good set-up to get the maximum performance out of the car over the whole lap. One thing to remember in Barcelona is that conditions do change quite quickly so finding the right set-up is a challenge."

Enrique Bernoldi retired from the San Marino Grand Prix from a strong 10th place and was disappointed not to have finished his first 2002 race. He now hopes that this will happen at Barcelona. "Barcelona is a nice track for me. I like the combination of turns – it has a good mixture of fast sweeping bends with some that are quite tight in the infield section," he said to the official Arrows website. "The pit-straight is quite fun also as it really calls for you to brake very late into the first corner. I said at San Marino that we really need to be aiming to get the car home, but as I couldn't do that in Imola. I'm hoping the testing the team did last week will allow us to do that here."

"Barcelona should be an interesting race for us. The team has been working hard back at the factory and in testing at Silverstone last week. We added some good mileage to the car which will hopefully remove some of the reliability problems we have had in the first few races," added Mike Coughlan, Technical Director. "The car was running well and we were moderately quick over the three days, so I think it's fair to say we come to Spain better prepared. Catalunya has some fast and slow turns which, along with the long straight, will require us to find the optimum set- up."