Day 3 Update

12.03.2009

Day 3 Update

Today again was somewhat of a mixture of major promise with unfortunate, and this time unavoidable, circumstances. What else can you say but thats racin. I went out first in the morning which looked to be a pretty good part of the day, even with a bit of rain overnight. We did a quick run to get back in the swing of things, then went back out on our baseline tire to get a better feel for things. I found the car to generally be on the loose side which was fast in the high speed corners but particularly limiting in the slow and medium speed sections as my issues were mostly when coming off the brakes and turning in - so I really couldnt challenge the braking zones. Even so, at that time of day my 1:19.8 was quite competitive and I was due to have better rubber on the next outing. I hopped out of the car for a few minutes while they re-booted the data system after having a problem with the electricity, and then went out to do a time.

I got out on the higher performance tire, and straight out of the pits I could tell it was going to be faster. It was still quite sensitive at the entry to the corners, but with the added grip of the tire, it wasnt as big of an issue so I started to push a little harder. As I was going around, I started to get confused because I was getting up through the gears much quicker than normal, hitting the limiter in more places, and so on. I thought, Am I really going that much quicker? Well, unfortunately not, it was actually a product of the re-boot that they did before the run, and happened to land me in the wrong engine settings again. So while I did get a bit of a feel for the extra grip, it was somewhat masked by the difference in the settings and far offset by the lower revs I had. The team was great about it and decided to scratch a different test to give me a fair shot at doing a time, so we set up to have another go at it.

I went out the second time around and on my second timed lap, when the tires were really in, I was heading into the final sector already about six tenths up on my previous quickest lap& And a red flag came out!!! How frustrating is that?! I felt like the racing gods just didnt want me to complete a proper lap! Such is the unfortunate nature of racing sometimes, I suppose. I think everyone was shaking their heads because of our apparent bum luck at that stage. At any rate, we cut our losses, changed some things over to go for a long run after the red, and ended up with some really useful data for the team I think. As we were setting up to make our final couple of runs it began to rain so we called it a day so things could be ready for the afternoon in case the weather stuck around.

Based on how it had gone for me in the morning, the team made some setup changes to try to address the corner entry problems that I was having since Paul had been troubled by the same issues. He went out and did his longer runs first with the shorter runs toward the end, and was able to make good use of the tires and changes posting the second quickest lap of the day. Looking at the data, I wasnt quite on target to run the same time that he did, but Im also quite certain that I could have taken full advantage of the changes to the car because he felt they definitely helped. Either way, I felt really good about how well I had been able to get on in some less-than-optimal conditions, and had an incredible time working with the team and driving the car.

Looking at it from a bit of a different perspective now that its over, its pretty incredible to have gotten the opportunity to drive a modern Formula One car. I felt like I made the most of my time both in and out of the car over the last week, and am very satisfied with how things turned out. Its always disappointing to have things end up not reflecting how well they actually went, but when I comes down to it, I now know that Ive got the tools to do the job along with a wealth of information to continue to develop with. It was an amazing experience to work with the Force India F1 Team, I really cant thank them enough for giving me the chance to drive the car and also for working together so well with me during the test, and look forward to sharing more later on. Thanks for following!