Formula One news

Minardi happy with two-day test

The Minardi team concluded a successful two-day test at this circuit in eastern Spain on Wednesday. Russian driver, Sergey Zlobin, continued his Formula One familiarisation programme in Minardi chassis PS01/04, which he also drove yesterday, while Italian driver, Matteo Bobbi, joined Zlobin on Wednesday afternoon at the wheel of chassis PS01/02.

Aside from giving both drivers further valuable on-track experience, the team's engineers used the test to evaluate new hardware and software for Minardi's 2003 car, the build of which is progressing well at the squad's Faenza factory. Zlobin completed 51 laps today, for a total of 80 laps in the course of his two days at Valencia, while Bobbi ran for 20 laps. Frenchman, Frank Montagny, who had his first Formula One test yesterday with Minardi, drove for 29 laps.

"Today I covered a distance of 320 km, which added to the number of laps I have covered so far at the wheel of a Formula One car, makes a total of 754 km," said Zlobin. "That is a good amount of running, although I know I still need to do more in order to handle F1 performance with confidence. I feel satisfied with today's result, though, because I have improved a little bit on yesterday. We'll now aim to prepare a new testing programme for 2003."

Matteo Bobbi commented, "I am very happy with today's test, although I only completed a relatively small number of laps. I managed to set a very good time considering that my fastest lap here last year was 1 minute 18 seconds with the same car. I used the PS01-02 chassis, which Franck (Montagny) drove yesterday, and after some initial changes to the set-up, I was able to get on the pace without any problem."



GIAN-CARLO MINARDI

"The team had a productive two-day test here in Valencia, which went without any difficulties. The engineers completed their scheduled programmes, so tonight we'll make our way back to Faenza with some useful data."

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