Force India’s Sergio Perez has been made happy by taking part in another long run of laps in the second day of the second test at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.
The Mexican set a lap time of 1:25.593 on his way to eighth fastest in the session. He completed 128 laps in the VJM09 in his second day in the cockpit of the new Force India as he continues to prepare for the start of the season.
With such a large amount of time on track, Perez gave a positive response to his day’s running: “It was a very good day and it was great to go well over 100 laps, even if the conditions, especially at the end, were not ideal with a lot of wind. It was a good effort from everyone in the team to go this far without any issues and to complete our programme.
“I think we learnt a lot from today and we have plenty of things to analyse tonight. The long runs we did in the afternoon were very important to help us learn about the tyres and how to manage them.”
However, Perez was quick to stress that the team will be benefit from the days of testing remaining: “The next couple of days will be important to make more gains and I am looking forward to getting back in the car on Friday. There is still a lot of work to be done to be as prepared as possible for Melbourne.”
Tom McCullough, the team’s Chief Race Engineer, echoed the optimistic vibes: “It has been another positive day in which we were able to cover extensive mileage and tick off all the items in our test plan. Sergio got back in the car after his first experience last week and it was important to be able to evaluate his feedback compared to Nico [Hulkenberg]’s from yesterday.
“Like Nico, he was able to count on the car’s reliability, covering 128 laps without issues. This morning, we continued our work on aero data correlation, fitting sensors to the car to collect more information for our engineers. In the afternoon, the focus shifted to long runs, working on the set up and on understanding the new tyres even further.
“The increasingly windy conditions didn’t make for the best setting but in general it was a good day, which helped us increase our overall understanding of the VJM09. We have two move days ahead in which we will continue our work in a similar fashion, with Nico getting back in the car tomorrow.”
Nico Hulkenberg is back in the Force India for his final laps of testing tomorrow before Perez returns to the car on the final day of testing on Friday to put in his final laps before the Australian Grand Prix weekend.
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