Force India fourth quickest in Jerez testing

JEREZ - Paul di Resta of Force India returned the fourth quickest time in the Formula One test session for rookie drivers at the Circuit de Jerez here.

Di Resta, the 23-year old from Scotland who was the second quickest on day 1, clocked one minute, 19.411 seconds that was slower than his previous best of 1:19.369 around the 4.337 Kms track while completing 58 laps here Wednesday.

The second Force India driver, J.R. Hildebrand, the 21-year-old American, clocked 1:20.517 over 49 laps that compared well with the 1:20.537 Tuesday and was eighth in the time charts, ahead of Ferraris Jules Bianchi (1:20.586).

Di Resta was in the car first this morning and after completing installation runs and some initial set up work, went on to run some 2010 development items and conduct some fuel system evaluation.

Hildebrand, the Indy Lights champion, took over for the afternoon session and conducted a similar programme of basic set up and evaluation of the VJM02 with a simulated 2010 fuel tank load and in colder conditions marked by light rain.

Di Resta said: Yesterday, the programme was to get comfortable in the car and to see how everything worked. I was able to get to a reasonable level quite quickly after one run so I felt prepared and had progressed enough for the team to be able to use me to test some development items, which will of course help them in 2010.

We had quite a structured programme this morning of running back to back set-up for 2009 and 2010 and both long and short runs, but it went pretty well. I’m up to speed now and I understand what I can do to improve my own performance.

Hildebrand said: When we first started running we were testing different brake settings, which really didn’t work very well for me. The first couple of runs were really spent working on that and then getting to grips with the track again, particularly as the grip had improved.

Coming into this test I was concerned I wouldn’t be able to maximise the high speed cornering of the car, but I was able to get the most out of the two high speed sections of the track so I was really happy with this progress.

Meanwhile, Gary Paffet of McLaren-Mercedes emerged the quickest in 1:18.718 that bettered Sebastian Vettels timing of 1:19.055 set in March this year.

He was followed by Nico Hulkenberg of Williams-Toyota in 1:19.184 and Daniel Ricciardo of Red Bull-Renault (1:19.243).