BY IANS,
Barcelona : Force India’s Adrian Sutil improved his lap time by one minute, 21.834 seconds around the 4.655 km Circuit de Catalunya on the second day of the four-day Formula 1 test session.
In balmy weather conditions here Tuesday, Sutil completed 82 laps to take his two-day mileage to nearly 1,000 km as he hands over the car to Giancarlo Fisichella for the remainder of the test session.
Sutil, who had clocked a best of 1:22.452 Monday when he put in 129 laps, focused on set-up changes, new aero tweaks and tyre comparisons.
Numerous red flags in the morning delayed the schedule slightly, but the team was able to push on with the majority of its work this afternoon and made in-roads into its pre-season planned programme.
“We could do a lot of running again today, which was the main aim of the programme. I feel a lot more confident in the car now we have got some reliability and can start to look at different set-ups and making the tyres work.
“We know we have a lot of work to do, particularly with the tyres as we still struggle to bring them in, but we now have a good idea of how the car is behaving. I’m looking forward to Melbourne now,” said Sutil.
Meanwhile, Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen posted the day’s quickest lap in 1:20.314 during his 55-lap programme, ahead of Kazuki Nakajima of Williams (1:20.907) and Rubens Barrichello of Brawn GP (1:20.966).
Also in action was former double world champion Fernando Alonso in a Renault. He clocked a best of 1:21.937, the eighth best time behind Sutil.