FEBRUARY 22, 2001

McLaren on top in Barcelona

LAST season's world championship runner-up Mika Hakkinen showed he is in good form for Australia by topping the times during testing at the Barcelona circuit on Thursday.

The Finn replaced David Coulthard in the car after the Scot's disastrous day on Wednesday when mechanical problems prevented him from setting a time.

Hakkinen had much better luck, and his car ran 82 laps without problems on the way to a best lap time of one minute 20.454 seconds.

McLaren test driver Alexander Wurz was marginally slower in the second McLaren, while Juan Pablo Montoya was present to complete the final day's preparation for the BMW-Williams team before they fly to Australia.

BMW-Williams concentrated on final systems checks on what will be the team's spare chassis in Melbourne, but would have liked to complete more set-up work than was possible.

"We couldn't spent too much time on set-up because systems checks was a priority," said chief operations engineer Sam Michael.

Testing times from Barcelona on Thursday:

POS DRIVER ENTRANT TIME
Mika Hakkinen McLaren 1:20.454
Alexander Wurz McLaren 1:20.491
Juan Pablo Montoya Williams 1:22.007