Despite the unpredictable weather, Jacques Villeneuve ended Team SAUBER PETRONAS’ final day of test on a high note after discovering several key characteristics of each other at the Circuito Permanente de Jerez yesterday.

The team gained extensive knowledge of their new driver’s driving behaviour to suit to their new car. In yesterday’s final day of test, Villeneuve covered 81 laps to set today´s best time of 1:28.347s.

Race Engineer Giampaolo Dall´Ara explains: “The weather we experienced the last three days was not what you wish for testing, but I believe we were still able to cope with it pretty well. Because of those bad conditions we couldn´t run our programme as originally planned, but we moved our focus to more Michelin tyre work and in this way still learnt quite a lot.

“It also helped us to further gain knowledge of Jacques´ driving style, and for him it was a valuable time to acclimatise to the car and the team.

“Jacques and Felipe covered altogether more than 950 kilometres and we didn´t experience technical problems which speaks for reliability and consistency. Overall I´m happy with what we´ve done,” he added.

The team will be testing again from 14 to 16 January 2005 in Valencia.