Nogaro test - day three: 26 May.

Late afternoon rain greeted Williams and BAR as they concluded their pre-Monaco running at Nogaro today, but could not prevent Ralf Schumacher from coming out on top of the times.

The teams stressed that speeds were not the main objective of the three-day test, as both sought to use Nogaro's twisting nature to hone a set-up for the similarly-testing Principality street circuit. While Williams ran through a pre-arranged programme of mechanical and aerodynamic changes, however, BAR had an additional piece of wizardry to try out.

The Brackley team has been developing an all-encompassing management system - codenamed Athena 200 - for some time, and used all three cars present at Nogaro to give it a thorough shakedown in test conditions. The technology ran without too much trouble, and left test driver Patrick Lemarie in awe of its potential.

''Most of my time was spent doing systems checks and assisting the Honda engineers with their electronics programme,'' the Frenchman revealed, ''We only ran at low revs since this was not a performance test, but the improvement to the system over the two days of the test was really impressive - Honda has done some amazing work.''

Lemarie also tried out a new power-steering system on his 002 but, whilst expressing satisfaction with its performance, admitted that it needed to be run at higher speeds - and with greater amounts of downforce acting on the car - before a solid evaluation could be made.

On the whole, BAR returned to Brackley pleased with the way its first three-car test had progressed, but admitting that it had been a difficult programme to arrange and complete.

''It was a massive undertaking, both technically and logistically,'' confirmed chief engineer Steve Farrell, ''It allowed us to conduct several different development programmes concurrently, but required a really big effort by everyone here and back at Brackley. We had nearly 80 people on site, such was the amount of work we wanted to get through but, at the end of two hectic days, it is fair to say that we completed nearly all of our objectives and very happy with the overall results.''

Regular race pilots Jacques Villeneuve and Ricardo Zonta were also present at the French circuit, and concentrated on finding the right set-up with which to begin the Monaco weekend. It was a similar story at Williams where Schumacher and team-mate Jenson Button ran for all three days, the German coming closest to the record times apparently quoted for Villeneuve on Thursday.

Schumacher did eventually come out on top, finishing comfortably ahead of his English partner on Thursday, but having been reined in by the end of the session today [Friday]. Button found himself stranded on the track in the early stages of the test, the victim of a hydraulics failure, and later admitted that he had not been pushing as hard as he might for fear of damaging the car.

''I had a good and busy test,'' he revealed, ''I drove some long runs and everything has gone more or less to plan. I did drive quite carefully, however, because the run-offs here are not that wide!''

Leading performances (25 May):

Ralf Schumacher Williams-BMW 1min 15.12secs
Jenson Button Williams-BMW 1min 16.64secs
Jacques Villeneuve BAR-Honda 1min 17.32secs
Ricardo Zonta BAR-Honda 1min 17.38secs
Patrick Lemarie BAR-Honda 1min 20.71secs

Leading performances (26 May):

Ralf Schumacher Williams-BMW 1min 15.52secs
Jenson Button Williams-BMW 1min 15.55secs
Ricardo Zonta BAR-Honda 1min 17.38secs
Jacques Villeneuve BAR-Honda 1min 17.92secs
Patrick Lemarie BAR-Honda 1min 19.43secs

[Times courtesy of British American Racing Honda]