Wednesday December 15th, 1999

Olivier Panis was the fastest driver in testing today at Jerez. Panis was joined today by David Coulthard, who was just over a second slower than him with the third fastest time.

Stewart continued testing with three drivers, with Johnny Herbert third fastest just behind Ferrari's Rubens Barrichello, test driver Luciano Burti just over a second slower with the seventh fastest time and Eddie Irvine slowest, just under a second slower than Burti, and apparently not yet fully settled into driving the Stewart.

Minardi completed their "young driver" tests, with Max Wilson and Norberto Fontana setting almost identical times. However, the big surprise for Minardi was Marc Gene, who set the fourth fastest time overall, faster than Coulthard and less than a second slower than Panis.

Sauber and Williams continued testing with the same drivers, Mika Salo experiencing a clutch problem which ended his day early.

Pos  Driver       Team                Time    

 1.  Panis        McLaren-Mercedes    1:24.418

 2.  Barrichello  Ferrari             1:24.983

 3.  Herbert      Stewart-Ford        1:25.081

 4.  Gene         Minardi-Ford        1:25.157

 5.  Coulthard    McLaren-Mercedes    1:25.508

 6.  Villeneuve   BAR-Honda           1:25.843

 7.  Burti        Stewart-Ford        1:26.177

 8.  Junqueira    Williams-BMW        1:26.704

 9.  Diniz        Sauber-Petronas     1:26.828

10.  Irvine       Stewart-Ford        1:26.946

11.  Fontana      Minardi-Ford        1:27.774

12.  Wilson       Minardi-Ford        1:27.824

13.  Manning      Williams-BMW        1:28.829

14.  Salo         Sauber-Petronas     1:42.214

Meanwhile, at a wet Barcelona the Arrows and Prost teams tested, with Nick Heidfeld in the Prost fastest with a 1:35.5, just over a second faster than teammate Jean Alesi with a 1:36.8, and third fastest was Pedro de la Rosa with a 1:42.6. Tom Coronel was also scheduled to run in the Arrows but his testing was postponed due to the poor weather.