Force India Barcelona test, day 4 report

Sutil concludes second VJM04 test in Barcelona

21 February 2011 - Adrian Sutil brought the second test of the Force India F1 Team's VJM04 to a close at the Circuit de Catalunya today. Following on from yesterday's programme Adrian worked on tyre evaluation, running the supersoft Pirelli tyre for the first time this test, and further fine-tuned the set-up and balance of the 2011 car. The German also used the KERS system for the first time and covered 64 laps in total.

The team will now return to its base in the UK to regroup ahead of the final all-team test, which will now take place in Barcelona from 8 - 11 March.

Adrian Sutil A very productive day in general for us. We made some good progress with the balance and we've now got a basic set-up that feels smooth and easy to drive. I also got a run on the supersoft tyres, which we didn't manage to do yesterday. Of course we also put the KERS on the car. It ran reliably and allowed us to complete the full test programme: very promising for this point in testing. It's still early days for the system but we have got ourselves into a good rhythm and can feed this back into the factory to get some more performance for the next test.

Dominic Harlow, circuit engineering director A good final day's testing concentrating on KERS set-up, reliability and also some aero tests that remained on our programme. Adrian also looked at some ride height sweeps and a few procedural checks. It's been a productive four days for the team and overall the car seems to be performing reliably and according to expectations in all the major areas.

Testing data Driver: Adrian Sutil Track: Circuit de Catalunya, Spain Best lap time: 1:24.177 Laps completed: 64 Kilometres completed: 298km Air temperature: High of 16 C Track temperature: High of 21 C Weather: Mainly sunny and dry