Force India Barcelona Day 1 Test Report

Sahara Force India continued its testing programme in Barcelona as Sergio Perez completed 128 laps with a best time of 1:25.593. Nico Hülkenberg returns to the car tomorrow.

Chassis: VJM09-02

Laps: 128 laps

Mileage: 596 km

Best lap: 1:25.593 (P8)

Sergio Perez: “It was a very good day and it was great to go well over 100 laps, even if the conditions, especially at the end, were not ideal with a lot of wind. It was a good effort from everyone in the team to go this far without any issues and to complete our programme. I think we learnt a lot from today and we have plenty of things to analyse tonight. The long runs we did in the afternoon were very important to help us learn about the tyres and how to manage them. The next couple of days will be important to make more gains and I am looking forward to getting back in the car on Friday. There is still a lot of work to be done to be as prepared as possible for Melbourne.     

Tom McCullough, Chief Race Engineer

"It has been another positive day in which we were able to cover extensive mileage and tick off all the items in our test plan. Sergio got back in the car after his first experience last week and it was important to be able to evaluate his feedback compared to Nico´s from yesterday. Like Nico, he was able to count on the car´s reliability, covering 128 laps without issues. This morning, we continued our work on aero data correlation, fitting sensors to the car to collect more information for our engineers. In the afternoon, the focus shifted to long runs, working on the set-up and on understanding the new tyres even further. The increasingly windy conditions didn´t make for the best setting but in general it was a good day, which helped us increase our overall understanding of the VJM09. We have two more days ahead in which we will continue our work in a similar fashion, with Nico getting back in the car tomorrow."