Force India’s development driver Alfonso Celis Jr. has further prepared himself for future free practice runs in the coming season having completed his second day of pre-season testing.
The Mexican set a lap time of 1:24.840 to finish third fastest during the session in which he completed 75 laps.
After the session, Celis Jr. said that he was content with his work: “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 soft tyres 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, the team’s Chief Race Engineer, was pleased with both Celis Jr. and how the first test has gone as whole: “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 progress with understanding the new car, which leaves us well placed to maximise the final four days of testing next week.”
In the second test next week, Nico Hulkenberg and Sergio Perez will take two days each in the VJM09. The German is set to drive on the first and third days, with Perez scheduled to drive on the second and fourth days.
