Testing time ahead for Frentzen

Heinz-Harald Frentzen made no bones about his performance in Sunday's Brazilian Grand Prix. "It was nothing sensational," he said of a race in which he trailed home in ninth place while his team-mate, Jacques Villeneuve, won convincingly.

"A bad start - a driver problem - then I got stuck behind two Jordans. After my second pit stop I had a gear-change problem. The return spring on the right-hand gear-lever paddle wasn't working because of a problem with the steering-wheel assembly, so I had to push the lever back every time with my middle finger. I could only shift at low revs and sometimes in shifting it down I went down another gear."

The young German was drafted into Williams to replace Damon Hill, and Frank Williams' decision to employ the young German with a reputation to rival that of Michael Schumacher during their days as Mercedes-Benz sportscar partners aroused strong criticism. Thus far, Frentzen has been annihilated by Villeneuve, who himself was frequently beaten by Hill in the latter's successful 1996 championship season. But he insists that his confidence, although battered, remains intact.

"I won't give up that quickly," he said after the race. "I get more motivation out of this. I need to test because I'm not happy with the car in qualifying set-up, although we did discover that I had a broken front damper in qualifying."

Villeneuve completed 6,000 kilometres of pre-season testing when he graduated to F1 and used it to hone his unusual set-up. "He prefers to run the car as stiff as a kart rather than have it absorb bumps," Patrick Head, the Williams technical director, said. "Then he takes care of catching it when it slides."

"Jacques certainly runs a different set-up to me," Frentzen said. "As a new guy to Williams, my way of setting up a car is different. The team is giving me advice and at the moment I'm still working out my point of view of setting up the car, and also Williams' point of view. At the moment, it's a mixture of Damon Hill's set-up and my own, and I look forward to more testing to work in my direction."

The Williams is difficult to set up because it has more options than most cars. "Technically it is very advanced," Frentzen said. "So from a driver's point of view, and mine especially, there is much more information which I have to sort out before I make the car 100 per cent. The more information, the more things you can make wrong."

"If I knew what the problem is, we would fix it," Head said. "Maybe the bumpiness here threw him. He seems to like it better when we've got more fuel in the car. I wouldn't say either of his performances so far have been very exciting, but the season's got a lot of races in it.

"I think it's going to take him half the season to get into it. Obviously, we'd like him to step into the car and be on the pace straight away, but he's not and it's something he's got to work out. I could hardly imagine that he believes that was a particularly great performance."

This time last year, both Williams drivers were the class of the field. Now McLaren- Mercedes leads the constructors' championship and the competition is hotting up. If Frentzen were to receive a report right now, it would read: "Nice fellow, but must do better." Assuredly, Williams will not expect his current form to continue for long.