Force India work on understanding the car
Adrian Sutil continued to put the miles on the new VJM04 at the Jerez de la Frontera circuit in southern Spain. On only its second day of testing Adrian put more than 300km with a best time of 1:21.780, the sixth quickest of the day.
With a good foundation set-up established yesterday, Adrian evaluated the different tyre compounds available this test before moving onto more performance work in the afternoon. The car ran reliably throughout the day, allowing the team to push on with its programme for the week.
Adrian will now hand over to Paul di Resta for his first-ever laps in the VJM04 tomorrow.
Adrian Sutil:
Today was really the start of testing for us as yesterday was principally a shakedown to make sure the systems all worked correctly. It went well, with a lot of laps completed. The car has a good balance and I think for the first real day of running we did a reasonable lap time. We had a reoccurrence of yesterday's problems with the floor and we know what the issue is, but to get a permanent fix we'll have to go back to the factory. I'm already looking forward to seeing how it goes in Barcelona with the KERS and the moveable rear wing, which should both give some extra performance.
Dominic Harlow, circuit engineering director:
A productive second day with the VJM04, with Adrian running all the available tyre compounds, carrying out some aerodynamic tests and just starting to look at setup of the car. There were no major reliability issues aside from a couple of sensors. That is encouraging, also good to see was a general improvement in laptime as we started to understand the car better despite the circuit probably dropping off a bit this afternoon. Paul will get his first opportunity to drive the car tomorrow and will pickup the programme where we left off this afternoon.
Testing data
Driver: Adrian Sutil
Track: Jerez de la Frontera, Spain
Best lap time: 1:21.780
Laps completed: 73
Kilometres completed: 323km
Air temperature: High of 23 C
Track temperature: High of 30 C
Weather: Bright and sunny
