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