Happy to be Home

The day also marked the return of SAUBER veteran, Nick Heidfeld, who will pilot the BMW works entry next season.

"After an almost three-month break I could hardly wait for the first test," said the exuberant Heidfeld. "The chassis and engine ran without any problems in the morning. All the systems were working perfectly."

Heidfeld described his first impressions of the V8 powerplant. "Of course you can tell the difference in performance compared to the V10. That’s something you just have to get used to. A positive surprise is that the engine vibrates a lot less than I had expected," the German admitted. In the afternoon we had to break off work early when the engineers spotted a problem in the data and told me to switch off the engine. Tomorrow we will resume our programme as planned."

The team will continue testing the BMW V8 tomorrow as more teams arrive at the track.

For full 2005 post-season test results click here.

P	Driver	Team	Engine	Car	Tyre	Best Lap	Gap
1	Paffett	McLaren	Mercedes	MP4/20	M	1:20.586	-:--.---
2	Wurz	McLaren	Mercedes	MP4/20	M	1:20.665	0.079
3	Heidfeld	SAUBER	PETRONAS	C24B	M	1:21.634	1.048

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