Paul di Resta had a much better day in Barcelona today as he completed 80 laps of the Circuit de Catalunya and largely succeeded in executing his testing programme.
This represents a huge improvement on yesterday when Force India could not run before lunch as they were waiting for parts to arrive from the factory. Di Resta completed just 26 laps on the first day of the test.
“Today was a definite improvement over yesterday’s running with a lot more laps under our belt,” said the Scot. “We ran through a lot of set-ups with the different tyre compounds and the car felt more balanced, which showed in a generally better lap time.
“Apart from [a] problem with the throttle sensor in the afternoon everything went pretty much to plan and we’ve got a lot of information to feed into Adrian’s programme tomorrow and for the rest of the test.”
Dominic Harlow, circuit engineering designer, did not seem overly concerned with the sensor issue as he explained Force India‘s focus for the day. “Paul again concentrated on long run comparison of the tyres with some further aero, brake material and set-up tests today,” he explained. “A sensor problem later in the afternoon resulted in the only real down time of the day. It was a reliability issue, but in testing and we are confident it is understood and can be addressed.”
Adrian Sutil takes over testing duties for Force India tomorrow.
