P4 for Perez on day 2 in Barcelona

(© Ben Johnston 2015)

The Sahara Force India Formula One Team had a productive day at the Barcelona Circuit de Catalunya on Friday. Sergio ‘Checco’ Perez was once again behind the wheel of last year’s VJM07 chassis which he shared with Pascal Wehrlein on Thursday.

Perez completed 121 laps over the course of the day which was the second highest of the day. The Mexican ended the session in fourth place with a fastest time of 1m 24.702s.

Perez has now completed his programme for this Barcelona test but will be back in action next week at the Barcelona Circuit de Catalunya for the final winter test. German Pascal Wehrlein will be back in action on Saturday before Nico Hulkenberg drives the car for the final day of the test on Sunday. Speaking after the running on Friday, Perez said:

‘I am really happy with the way the day went and by the amount of laps we managed to complete. We worked on understanding the new tyres and I think we took a good step forward in that respect; of course, we are waiting for our 'new baby' to come and we're really looking forward to put all the learning we did in the last two days into practice with the new car. On a personal level, these days have also been valuable to get to know my new race and performance engineers: we made good progress and I am looking forward to even more when working on the simulator this coming week.'

Sahara Force India’s Chief Race Engineer Tom McCollough stated:

'It was a very productive day with a solid 121 laps and no technical issues. Our main objectives of the day were for Sergio to get to know his new engineering team better, in addition to lots of setup and procedural work. We continued the evaluation of the 2015 Pirelli tyres we started yesterday, working through performance running in the morning and long runs in the afternoon. The data we gathered today will be really useful not just for the first few races, but also for the final test next week. We are looking forward to continuing our testing programme over the final two days.'

© Ben Johnston 2015