Bahrain II, Day 3: Force India test report

Nico Hulkenberg returned to the cockpit of the VJM07 today as Sahara Force India completed the penultimate day of pre-season testing in Bahrain.

Nico Hulkenberg

"Lots of laps today, which is good, and it’s the third day in a row that the team has done more than 100 laps. When I jumped in the car this morning I could feel the progress the team has made since I last drove at the end of last week, so it shows we are moving in the right direction. The track conditions were quite tricky because it was windy, but otherwise it was a successful day and my feeling with the car is pretty good. We got through the test programme and hit the objectives for the day, including a race simulation in the afternoon. For the final day tomorrow we will continue doing our homework for Melbourne, ticking off the boxes and try and do another race simulation.”

Andrew Green, Technical Director

“Once again we were able to do a lot of valuable work today and hit our target number of laps, which is very satisfying. At this stage of testing we still have lots of items to evaluate, but we’ve been able to combine this with giving Nico the opportunity to explore numerous set-up options ahead of Melbourne. He managed to try all the different tyre compounds available today and did three solid long runs at the end of the day, which went to plan. Nico also ran through some of the new procedures needed this year, especially those for grid formation."