Force India Barcelona test notes day four

Adrian Sutil brought the Force India F1 Team's 2010 winter testing programme to a close at the Circuit de Catalunya today. The German ended the testing on a high with the fourth quickest time of the day, 0.139secs behind Lewis Hamilton.

Adrian 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 4,000km 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 14 March.

Adrian Sutil

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 sim went well. Speed-wise the car is competitive and we have to show it in Bahrain now.

Dominic Harlow, chief race engineer

This morning was very windy, and it was affecting the balance of the car quite a lot. We changed our programme because of this, completing some long run evaluations either side of lunch and some performance outings in the afternoon with Adrian. He also tested some different brake materials and some developments for the brake cooling. It was a good day to complete our 2010 winter testing programme, covering 100 laps and signing off our pre-season test objectives. The team has worked extremely hard these past four days and they deserve credit for a very intensive February of running.

-source: force india