- News>
- Motorsports
Sutil third fastest on day 3
Heavy rain and frequent red flags compromised part of the schedule but Force India driver Adrian Sutil still posted the third fastest time on day three of the team`s four-day testing at the Circuit de Jerez here.
Jerez: Heavy rain and frequent red
flags compromised part of the schedule but Force India driver
Adrian Sutil still posted the third fastest time on day three
of the team`s four-day testing at the Circuit de Jerez here.
Taking over from Antonio Liuzzi, Sutil completed some dry
laps before rain intervened and the German`s best lap of
1:21.428 posted in this dry period remained the third fastest
time behind Jaime Alguersuari (1:19.919) of Toro Rosso and
BMW Sauber`s Pedro de la Rosa (1:20.736).
Sutil`s programme followed on from Liuzzi`s schedule of
the previous two days, with systems checks, long runs and
set-up evaluation. Sutil completed 48 laps before an
electrical fault halted him on track some 90 minutes before
the end of the session yesterday.
"It was nice to have some dry running. The car is good
and I think it`s a positive place to start. I`m very confident
on the general speed of the car," Sutil later said.
"We had a problem in the afternoon that caused us to miss
a bit of track time, but considering it was so wet it would
have been very difficult to get a lot of running in anyway.
I`m pleased to at least have had some dry running and some
more time in the car," added Sutil.
Chief race engineer Dominic Harlow said the team expected
rain at mid-morning and hence moved to aerodynamic testing.
"Some further new components were introduced successfully
and the intermediate and then wet conditions allowed Adrian to
look at tyre options for these conditions. We had an issue
that resulted in some downtime in the afternoon, but with the
weather worsening it didn`t cost us much track time and that
is what testing with a new car is about," Harlow said.
Behind Sutil was Ferrari`s Felipe Massa on his third day
at the wheel of the F10. The Brazilian could manage around 20
laps on dry tyres before having to run only with rain tyres.
PTI
PTI