BAR HONDA CONCLUDES THREE-DAY TEST IN JEREZ

FIA Formula 1 World Championship
Testing - Jerez, 23-25 February 2000

Lucky Strike Reynard BAR Honda's pre-season testing programme continued this week, with three days at the Jerez circuit near Seville. The team took advantage of the clear Spanish skies to complete over 250 laps of the 4.428 kilometre circuit, including a full race distance on Thursday, taking this winter's tally to well over 6,000km, in preparation for the 2000 Formula One season.

Kazutoshi Nishizawa, Technical Director, Honda Racing Development Ltd: "We have used this test to confirm the reliability of the RA000E and the associated systems before Melbourne. We have completed the distance on each engine every day, including a full race run yesterday. We will now go to Silverstone to make final preparations for Australia."

Andrew Alsworth, Assistant Team Manager, British American Racing: "We have completed a lot of laps in three days, confirming the previous reliability strengths and we have worked through the full test programme we had planned for Jerez. We are not focusing on performance work at this stage and did not make any serious attempt to set a time, so we can be pleased with the week's result."

Jacques Villeneuve:
"We have made some more progress here and we can certainly say that the car is reliable at this stage. The most important thing about the early season races is to get to the finish and I am confident that we are in good shape to be there at the end of the first race."

Next Tuesday (29 February) Jacques Villeneuve will make a brief appearance on the Honda stand at the Geneva Motor Show. Jacques Villeneuve and Ricardo Zonta will also be present at a Honda Motor press conference in Tokyo, Japan on March 3, during a visit to Honda's technical facilities en route to Melbourne for the Australian Grand Prix.

Friday's unofficial times from Jerez