By BAR F1 (12/01/2005)
January 13 2005

Lucky Strike BAR Honda's first test of the 2005 season began on Monday morning at the Jerez circuit in Spain. This four-day test sees Anthony Davidson and Enrique Bernoldi carrying out the driving duties for the first two days, followed by Jenson Button and Takuma Sato on Wednesday and Thursday. Both test drivers are in the interim '05 Concept cars for the final test before the launch of the new BAR Honda 007 this weekend. They spent the early runs of the morning session acclimatising themselves with the cars and the circuit after the four-week break.

Enrique completed 50 laps in the morning running through a chassis programme and set some consistent lap times. Anthony ran through a tyre evaluation completing 39 laps. Enrique's afternoon schedule was to complete a 50 lap run on one set of tyres. A clutch problem ended his session early as he returned to the garage so that the clutch could be changed. Enrique completed a total of 89 laps during the day.

Anthony's plan was to complete long runs on the Michelin tyres which he scrubbed this morning. He also suffered a mechanical problem on his first run. His scheduled programme was altered and he went back out to run on the same set of tyres which Enrique had previously used. Anthony finished off the day scrubbing three sets of tyres in readiness for tomorrow and completed a total of 76 laps.