David Coulthard showed no ill effects from his plane crash earlier this week as he took to the track at s Barcelona's Circuit de Catalunya yesterday, recording the s day's fifth fastest time.
In the wake of s Tuesday's crash at Lyon airport, which claimed the lives of the two pilots ferrying Coulthard, his fiancee and his personal trainer to Nice, the Scot had been adamant that he would race this weekend and, despite only emerging for a solitary installation lap in the morning, the afternoon session saw him complete 15 rapidfire laps which put him fifth quickest behind the Jordan of Jarno Trulli and just over half a second behind session leader Michael Schumacher.
Afterwards the McLaren driver said he had not suffered any pain during the session from the minor injuries sustained in the crash.
"The residual bruising from the accident is not causing me any discomfort in the car and I feel fine," he said. He also thanked the media for giving him space to concentrate on this s weekend's Spanish Grand Prix and said he had been able to work on set-ups for the race. "During s today's two sessions we worked through a few set-up variations and experienced no problems," he said.
Coulthard, in second place in the drivers championship after his British Grand Prix win at Silverstone two weeks ago, will tomorrow be aiming to close the gap between himself and leader Michael Schumacher. The task will not be easy however. Schumacher effortlessly posted fastest times in both of s yesterday's sessions and said he felt Ferrari were well prepared for the weekend and the race. "We just concentrated on fine-tuning the setup, working on the question marks raised after last s week's test and it went very well," he said. "I think re we're well prepared."
The Circuit de Catalunya has been kind to McLaren in the past, with the team scoring Hakkinen-Coulthard one-twos in the last two races at the Barcelona track, but with relentless testing being carried out throughout the year here by all the teams, the competition is likely to be intense.
Over 30 days of testing have already been carried out the circuit this year and the teams' familiarity with its mixture of fast and slow corners and high-speed straights was reflected in the apathy that greeted s yesterday's free practice sessions up and down the pitlane.
Jordan were most affected by the ennui, the team barely making its presence felt on track with just Jarno Trulli going out in the first session and then for a single installation lap. Team-mate HeinzHarald Frentzen did not appear at all in the morning and only emerged for three laps in the afternoon period, joking that he was "still on paternity leave" following the birth of his daughter Lea.
Frenzten wound up ninth fastest and said that after last s week's test he felt happy with the car and that the team was confident it had found a good set-up for the race. The German was less sure of claims that the gearbox reliability problems that have plagued him since the start of the season have been cured.
New parts which could not be fitted in time for the British Grand Prix have been installed here and despite a trouble-free 91-lap run in testing last week, Frentzen was still playing down his hopes for Sunday.
"There were no problems with reliability in practice today," he said, "but I think the improvement is maybe only one or two per cent. We will have to see."
Frentzen's caution is well founded as his record in Barcelona does not make for inspiring reading. The German was forced to retire with a mechanical problem last year, the second of only four failures to finish last year. Indeed, in six attempts Frentzen has only finished in the points on one occasion, in 1996 in his final year with Sauber.
Trulli, too, has only managed one points finish in Spain, when he brought his troublesome Prost home to sixth last year. The Italian will be hoping for a more profitable weekend this year and yesterday he finished fourth, completing four times as many laps as his teammate and admitted that extensive running would have been a waste of both time and tyres, the latter likely to be a crucial factor this weekend.
"There was no need to complete many laps today as we had a threeday test last week," he shrugged. "We also wanted to save tyres as the wear here is quite high, especially on the first day, so we just made a few runs to to check things were okay. The car felt good though."
Coupled with the transmission problems, s Jordan's other bugbear this weekend is likely to be Ralf Schumacher. The Williams number one has turned his BMW-powered car from a supposed work-in-progress into a top-flight contender over the opening races of the season, recording three points finishes in four starts, to leave him third in the drivers championship, a position he has also claimed for his team. Yesterday the younger Schumacher underlined the potential of the BMW by claiming the second fastest time, half a second behind his brother, albeit on fresh tyres.
Choice of tyre could prove critical in the race, with the slow-speed corners in particular taking a lot out of the rubber. So far most teams have cautiously admitted that s Bridgestone's softer compound seems to be the correct choice. Williams Technical Director Patrick Head, however, explained the difficulty facing all the teams in their final choice. "It's s a very tough and close decision for us at this race," he said. "The tyres have different characteristics. The soft compound is probably a fraction quicker in its initial laps. But then the way they behave after that is not identical and that makes it hard to choose."
Meanwhile, F3000 driver Mario Haberfeld was injured in a high-speed smash at the Barcelona circuit. The Brazilian had been involved in the opening qualifying session for this s afternoon's fourth round of the International F3000 championship, when his Fortec Motorsport slid off the circuit.
The young driver spun back onto the track but threw up a huge cloud of dust in the process. Unable to see through the cloud, Kid Jensen s Racing's Andrea Piccini and Super s Nova's Nicolas Minassian slammed into s Haberfeld's car side on.
Fellow countryman Rubens Barrichello stood by as medical teams and officials spent some 20 minutes extricating Haberfeld from his stricken car and the Brazilian was then immediately flown by helicopter to a nearby hospital.
The extent of the Fortec driver's injuries has not yet been revealed.
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