Force India brought the second test of the new VJM03 to an end today with Tonio Liuzzi completing 80 laps of the Jerez circuit.
The team concentrated on set-up work and understanding the car's behaviour with the heavy fuel loads which will be necessary under the new regulations this season.
Liuzzi's fastest lap was the fourth quickest of the day, and the Italian thinks the car development is progressing positively. “Today was a really productive day for us. We covered 80 laps without any issues and got through our programme of test items for this week. Everything went pretty well – we worked on understanding the car’s performance with different fuel loads and ran through some set-up changes and the car is responding well. We still need to work on the tyres over the longer runs and will continue this at the next test in Barcelona. Overall I think we can be very satisfied with how this test has gone and can look forward to another good test next week.”
Dominic Harlow, chief race engineer for the team, was pleased that the team could use their time in Jerez to clear up reliability issues with the new car. “A good day to finish the eight days of testing in Jerez. Tonio completed a broad programme of set-up tests and we are satisfied with what was learned. We’ve made good progress this week, having tidied up some reliability issues, and developed our set-up options with the VJM03. The team has begun its race preparation in earnest and we will head to Barcelona to continue this work over the final test before the first race of 2010.”
The team now move to the Barcelona for another test which begins on Thursday. Liuzzi will be in the car for the first two days, with Adrian Sutil taking over for the final two days.
