Testing report

Sahara Force India continues with third day of Jerez testing

James Rossiter and Paul Di Resta shared the testing duties on Thursday.

Sahara Force India continued testing in Jerez as James Rossiter completed 42 laps in the VJM06 this morning. Paul Di Resta completed a small number of laps this afternoon before an exhaust failure cut short the programme.

Paul di Resta, Sahara Force India VJM06

Photo by: XPB Images

James Rossiter: “It has been four and a half years since I last drove a Formula One car, but with the simulator experience I’ve built up recently it didn’t take too long to get back up to speed. The programme today has been very useful for getting a feel for the car as a reference for the simulator. The cars have changed quite a lot and it was the first time I’ve used KERS. It’s important to know how the tyres behave and we’ve worked hard to try and understand them this week. That will help make the simulator model more representative as a way of exploiting the car’s potential.”

Jakob Andreasen, Chief Race Engineer “The programme this morning with James went very well. We continued with the aero work and focussed on getting James comfortable with the car and back in the groove. Once the aero passes were complete, we had a chance to give James some short and long runs with both the medium and soft tyres, which will give him an important reference when running on the simulator. After lunch we installed Paul in the car, but an exhaust failure forced us to end the day early. Fortunately, good work by the engineers using the telemetry meant the damage was only superficial.”

Day Three Statistics:
Chassis: VJM06-02
Laps: James = 42 laps / Paul = 7 laps
Mileage: James = 186 km / Paul = 31 km
Fastest lap: James = 1:19.303 / Paul = 1:23.729
Classification: James = P6 / Paul = P12