Rain in Spain causes BAR little pain.

British American Racing continued to make steady progress on day two of the three-day test at Jerez, despite the morning session being delayed by wet weather.

The main purpose of the day was to push on with the dry tyre testing, but this was changed to a wet tyre evaluation in order to accommodate the sudden change in weather and track conditions. Olivier Panis and Darren Manning again drove the two Honda-powered 002 on hand, and continued with the tyre and traction control programmes they had begun on Tuesday.

Neither driver was able to maintain the sort of presence they achieved on the opening day, however, with Frenchman Panis slipping to the tail of the top ten times as he acclimatised to Bridgestone's latest compounds on a soaking circuit. The former McLaren tester also ran with next year's aerodynamic regulations in place, and spent much of the day adapting the set-up to suit both the conditions and his driving style.

"Today's track was really wet," he commented, "We were running with the 2001 downforce, but the balance of the car was quite good, and we tried out the different tyre compounds. It is important for me to learn the 2001 downforce, so we did a fair bit of running and made some set-up changes. We improved slightly, but it is important to continue working with Bridgestone in the wet conditions. Tomorrow, we will continue with the programme, and I am happy with the way the test is developing."

Team-mate Manning, seemingly not showing the strain of knowing the team had signed rising star Anthony Davidson as another tester, pushed on with the traction control system being developed for next season. The Briton was probably among those who didn't mind the change in conditions as he sought to push the car towards its limits in the wet, and was pleased with the time gains he appeared to make.

"We had another productive day," he confirmed, "and we are making further progress with the traction control. We achieved some better lap times today and, over the past two days, we have been able to make the car go faster - which is fantastic. Tomorrow, I will be swapping cars with Olivier, so it will be interesting to see what set-up work he has done on his car. There is still a lot more work to do, but we are definitely making progress."

The weather undoubtedly altered the team's plans for the day, but it knuckled down and managed to make the most of what could otherwise have been a meaningless couple of sessions.

"When we woke up this morning and found it was raining, the day's objectives changed a little," confirmed chief engineer Steve Farrell, "It was slightly disappointing not to be able to continue with the dry programme but, on saying that, we have now been able to run with Olivier in the wet as well as the dry, and again we were able to learn a lot. Overall, we have had a very productive day.

"We are very pleased with the feedback we are getting from Olivier, which confirms to us that we are going to have a very strong partnership next year. Darren continued to work on traction control, and that is coming along really well - in these wet conditions, the system is a very useful feature!

The test concludes tomorrow [Thursday] before the teams present move on to their respective engagements next week.