JANUARY 22, 1996

Williams dominates at Estoril

WILLIAMS continues to dominate winter testing with Damon Hill, Jacques Villeneuve and Jean-Christophe Boullion all outpacing the opposition with ease at Estoril last week.

The team spent the whole week running at the Portuguese track and was able to do a lot of work despite bad weather in the early part of the testing.

In the course of the test Hill blew up a new Renault RS8 engine and had a couple of incidents, but was otherwise happy with the progress being made, reckoning that the new Renault V10 was a lot more powerful than last year's dominant unit.

McLaren stayed on for a second straight week at Estoril, with David Coulthard, Alain Prost and Jan Magnussen all in action doing preparation work for parts which will be fitted on the new MP4/11 when it appears.

Mika Hakkinen is expected to be seen in action in Portugal within the next 10 days. The test will be to decide whether the Finn, who suffered serious head injuries in a crash at Adelaide in November, is going to be fit enough to race this year. If not, McLaren management says that it will be Magnussen rather than Prost who will be the replacement driver.

McLaren and Williams were joined at midweek by Jordan, which unveiled its new car and had both Martin Brundle and Rubens Barrichello testing...