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©2000 SpeedCenter Publishing Herdez/Bettenhausen Motorsports driver, Michel Jourdain Jr. wrapped up earlier than expected Thursday's testing session in the Firebird International Raceway, due to an engine problem. Michel Jourdain Jr., Car #16, Herdez/Bettenhausen Motorsports: "This testing in Firebird has been really productive for us. Today I was improving my times quickly and most of the changes we made were in the right direction. Unfortunately, our engine lost power and we had to stop earlier the session. Normally, under this conditions I would feel very frustrated, but our Mercedes-Benz engine is showing good potential and I think this kind of problem is just part of the development of the engine. We will resume our testing tomorrow (Friday)." Tom Brown, Managing Director/Chief Engineer, Herdez/Bettenhausen: "We had problems with the brakes and we had a problem with the back end of the car stiffing up on power. Those are the two big problems we had on Wednesday. We fixed the brakes and we spent the morning working on getting the car settled down on the back. We used different shock absorbers; we changed the spring balance and the aerodynamics. We were faster and I am very pleased today. There's not too much grip on the track. It's very difficult to find time when the track is very sloppy. I think the time we found is even more impressive under these conditions. Regarding the engine, it has more horsepower than last year's and we are just working on reliability." The team will wrap up tomorrow (Friday) the scheduled three-day testing session at the 1.25-mile circuit of Firebird (East), in Phoenix.
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