Minardi PS04 test at Mugello

Published on 01 October 2003 by Huub Rothengatter

esterday Ferrari and BAR tested their cars at Mugello. Today it is Minardi's turn, they hade brought 2 former Arrows cars with them (PS04). The test started at 9am this morning.

Jos Verstappen is the only driver present for Minardi. He expect to drive more laps than they were able to do two weeks ago. "We had to change the rear end of the car at our first test two weeks ago, this took 3 hours. We all had to get used to the car. That takes time." In that first test session Minardi was able to drive a total of 24 laps in the PS04. We are continuing where we left off 2 weeks ago. Jos: "We changed the height of the car, the mechanics are more familiar with the car so let's hope that we can drive plenty of laps."

Later Jos Verstappen told us that he is satisfied with their work at Mugello. On old tyres he achieves lap times of 1.25.3, about the same as the previous test. At the moment we spoke to Jos they were changing over to the second car. Jos told us that he had some problems with the gearbox. The second car, however, is not ready yet as there are some problems with the fuel supply. We adjusted the height of the car (higher) and that has a positive effect on it. He told us that he is very happy with it.

Around 4pm we spoke with Jos Verstappen and he told us: "It's there but I can't get it out yet. We still have to do a lot to make more progression. All I'm doing is one or two laps, back in, adjust and out again. We have done 27 laps now and my fastest lap is 1.25.1. The PS04 is faster than the Minardi but the difference is not enough to my liking. I'm going for another run and see if we can go a little faster."

At the end of the day the Minardi PS04 went 1 second faster than two weeks ago. That is the result of a days' test. Jos Verstappen is quite happy with today's efforts. "You need to test a lot to book enough progress. In comparison to the previous test we gained 1 second. This afternoon was almost without any hickups. The conditions were similar, so we can say the two tests were a fair comparison. What next? Tomorrow we will have to analyse all the data and that will give us some more information. For now we have to say that the tests with the PS04 were very useful."