Team talk: Day four at the first test

Force India

Celis Thursday story

Alfonso Celis (3rd, 1:24.840, 75 laps)
“It’s been another busy day with lots of aero and procedural work. Once again the car has shown great reliability and we managed to keep to the run plan without any significant issues. In the morning I was running mainly on the medium tyres and then moved to the softs in the afternoon. Each day in the car is a massive learning experience for me and I feel more comfortable with each run. I’ve also been able to get to know the engineers better this week, which is very important for the work I will do for the rest of the season.”

Tom McCullough, chief race engineer
“Another useful day of testing as we continue to prepare Alfonso for the work he will do for us during some free practice sessions. For example, we made sure we worked through many of the car procedures that he will be expected to do later in the year. We combined this with aero correlation to make sure we captured all the necessary data to feed back to the factory. Alfonso continued to take a mature approach to the tests, improving with each run as he built up his experience in the VJM09. Overall we can feel happy with how things have gone this week. It has been a productive four days and  we’ve made good progress with understanding the new car, which leaves us well placed to maximise the final four days of testing next week.”