Force India completed their pre-season testing in Barcelona today with Adrian Sutil completing 100 laps in the VJM03.
The German ended the day fourth in the standings, as the team worked through a full race programme, conducting a race simulation and qualifying runs, in addition to aero and brake work.
The team will now return to their Silverstone base to finalise preparations for the Bahrain Grand Prix.
Sutil was glad to get a full race distance under his belt, and is happy with the car’s performance. “I feel like this was the first proper test day for me. We did our long race simulation and I think we can be quite happy and confident. The pace was good, the tyre life was very good, and I was able to run a lot of laps on both the soft and the hard tyres without any problems so both compounds seem to be working really well for us. Also the qualifying sim went well. Speed-wise the car is competitive and we have to show it in Bahrain now.”
Chief engineer Dominic Harlow summarised the day for the team, and said he was happy with pre-season testing overall. “This morning was very windy, and it was affecting the balance of the car quite a lot. We changed our programme because of this, completing some long run evaluations either side of lunch and some performance outings in the afternoon with Adrian. He also tested some different brake materials and some developments for the brake cooling. It was a good day to complete our 2010 winter testing programme, covering 100 laps and signing off our pre-season test objectives. The team has worked extremely hard these past four days and they deserve credit for a very intensive February of running.”
