By IANS
Chennai : Force India, the Formula One team co-owned by Vijay Mallya, has completed 216 laps of the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona, Spain, on the penultimate day of F1 winter testing.
Force India, formerly Spyker F1, Wednesday used three drivers — with Christian Klein and Vitantonio Liuzzi sharing one car and Adrian Sutil running the other. The trio finished at the bottom of the time charts, though their timings were a vast improvement on that of day one.
Klein was the quickest of the three with a timing of 1:24.446 seconds, followed by Sutil (1:24.537) and Liuzzi (1:24.555).
Sutil had the key role of running a comprehensive programme to gather information on the new electronics system that will come into effect in 2008.
The trio replaced Roldan Rodriguez and Giedo van der Garde who had done test duties Tuesday.
Chief technical officer Mike Gascoyne, who had previously worked for McLaren, Tyrrell, Benetton and Renault teams, said in a press release: “Generally a very productive day of testing. Our major test item on both cars was the standard ECU (engine control unit) configuration.
“We had no major problems and were working to get through the unsolved issues with both cars completing over 100 laps each.
“It was also a chance to test Christian and Tonio, who had their first runs in the car to make themselves comfortable. We will continue our programme tomorrow (Thursday) with them driving a car each for the whole day.”