FEBRUARY 17, 2002

The last few days...

TESTING times are never very significant because teams can if they wish remove the ballast from their cars and make them go quicker than they can legally go to impress sponsors and so on. The last few days however tend to give a clearer indication of what is possible and who is where as the teams give the cars a final shaking down before they are despatched to Melbourne. This the last week for winter testing.

It seems at the moment that the World Championship battle will be fought out between Ferrari, Williams and McLaren with the rest likely to be led by Sauber. The Swiss team may even be going fast enough to mix with Williams and McLaren. The Honda-engined cars are expected to be rather down-on-power and so are likely to be behind Renault while it is not yet clear where Arrows and Toyota are going to be, although there are no signs that they will be mixing it with the big teams. Minardi will be there or thereabouts as well but the tussle in the midfield is going to be close and so the likes of Jaguar and the rest could be anywhere between 10th and 22nd places on the grid.