Champ Wilson tops test times.

New FIA champion Justin Wilson returned to the cockpit of an F3000 car at Estoril yesterday and promptly topped the timesheets at the Portuguese circuit.

The British driver, who clinched this year's title at the penultimate round in Belgium, rejoined former employer Nordic Racing to continue the test programme mapped out for the all-new Lola chassis destined for the series in 2002. Following on from initial development work carried out in recent weeks by fellow countryman Warren Hughes, Wilson was able to outpace a handful of rivals in older machines.

Former Nordic team-mate Tomas Enge got closest to the F1/CART aspirant, lapping just a tenth of a second slower in Arden's 2001-spec Lola, with Gianmaria Bruni the same distance back in the Russian-backed team's second car. Wilson was joined in the Nordic camp by Joel Camathias and the recently-signed Zsolt Baumgartner, who both logged best times over a second slower than Bruni.

Enge's appearance in the Arden pit caused a few raised eyebrows, as the Czech driver was expected to turn his back on F3000 in favour of F1 for 2002. However, with the recent news that the Prost team - for which Enge drove at the end of last season - was in receivership, the Czech is now being touted as a possible replacement for Darren Manning alongside Arden favourite Viktor Maslov.

Leading performances (27 November)

Leading performances (27 November)

Justin Wilson Nordic 1min 29.420secs*
Tomas Enge Arden 1min 29.506secs
Gianmaria Bruni Arden 1min 29.696secs
Joel Camathias Nordic 1min 30.878secs
Zsolt Baumgartner Nordic 1min 30.885secs
Yannick Schroeder Coloni 1min 31.118secs
Bj?rn Wirdheim Durango 1min 31.133secs
Jaroslav Janis Coloni 1min 31.630secs
Michael Bentwood Super Nova 1min 31.875secs
Mirko Venturi Durango 1min 33.293secs

[* denotes use of new for 2002 Lola B2/50]