New Force India car takes to track

JEREZ - Force Indias brand new 2011 model, the VJM04, completed its first-ever laps Thursday with Adrian Sutil behind the wheel at the Jerez de la Frontera circuit in southern Spain.

Sutil completed 28 laps with a best of one minute, 23.472 seconds that put him seventh on the unofficial time charts that of course are mere indicators in view of the different and undisclosed fuel loads of the participating cars.

The Force India team spent the day doing major systems checks and new components shaken down. After installation laps in the morning, Sutil gradually increased the lengths of his runs and clocked up 28 laps in total over the day.

Sutil will continue in the car Friday with the objective of running through further checks before moving onto performance work in the afternoon.

A successful first day of testing for the new car. It runs well and feels generally better than the 2010 car in every area,” said Sutil.

We had a good baseline set-up and balance, already the car is very smooth, which is always positive as then you can focus on improving performance. Despite a bit of downtime this morning with a problem with the floor we could still do 28 laps, which isn’t too bad for a new car.

I have got a good feeling and tomorrow we are going to aim to put in some more laps, longer runs and look at different tyre compounds.”