F1: Force India’s Sutil goes third quickest in pre-season testing

JEREZ - With wet weather playing havoc with the Formula One testing programme, Adrian Sutil of Force India squeezed in a third quickest time of 1 minute, 21.428 seconds during a brief period when rains let up here.

Sutil took over from Vitantonio Liuzzie the VJM03 for the third day of the programme Friday at the 4.423-km circuit. Again heavy rain affected the running for the majority of the day. However, Sutil completed some dry laps before the weather front arrived.

Sutil’s programme included systems checks, long runs and set-up evaluation. The heavy rain and frequent red flags compromised some of the schedule, but he completed 48 laps before an electrical fault halted him on track some 90 minutes before the end of the session.

“This morning, it was nice to have some dry running. The car is good and I think it’s a positive place to start. I’m very confident on the general speed of the car. Unfortunately, the rain came in quite early and then it was really waiting for reasonable conditions to go out.

“We had a problem in the afternoon that caused us to miss a bit of track time, but considering it was so wet it would have been very difficult to get a lot of running in anyway. I’m pleased to at least have had some dry running and some more time in the car and am looking forward to getting started again tomorrow,” said Sutil.

Topping the time chart was Jamie Alguersuari of Toro Rosso who posted a 1:19.919 over 76 laps while Pedro de la Rosa (BMW Sauber) was second quickest in 1:20.736 (58 laps).