Force India’s Sutil fourth quickest at winter testing

BARCELONA - Adrian Sutil brought the Force India F1 Team’s 2010 winter testing programme to a close at the Circuit de Catalunya here yesterday by clocking the fourth quickest time of one minute, 0.139seconds.

Sutil worked through a full race programme today in anticipation of the start of the 2010 championship in just two weeks’ time. He conducted a race simulation and qualifying runs, in addition to aero and brake work.

With a combined total of approximately 4,000kms and 12 days of testing under its belt, the team will now head back to Silverstone to finalise preparations for the Bahrain Grand Prix on March 14.

Summing up the test programme, Sutil said: 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 simulation went well. Speed-wise the car is competitive and we have to show it in Bahrain now.

Lewis Hamilton, the 2008 champion, was the quickest in 1:20.472 over 134 laps in the McLaren, followed by Red Bull’s Mark Webber (1:20.496) and Ferrari’s Felipe Massa (1:20.539).

Seven times World champion Michael Schumacher, returning to F1 after a three-season break, was sixth in 1:20.745 on a day when less than a second separated the top eight.