Tonio brought the VJM03′s second test to a close today at the Jerez de la Frontera circuit. The Italian covered 80 laps of the Spanish track with a programme that included work on set-up and understanding the car’s behaviour with the heavier fuel loads necessitated by the race refuelling ban this year. His fastest lap of 1:19.650 was the fourth quickest of the day.

After the test he said: “Today was a really productive day for us. We covered 80 laps without any issues and got through our programme of test items for this week. Everything went pretty well – we worked on understanding the car’s performance with different fuel loads and ran through some set-up changes and the car is responding well. We still need to work on the tyres over the longer runs and will continue this at the next test in Barcelona. Overall I think we can be very satisfied with how this test has gone and can look forward to another good test next week.”

The team’s testing programme will now move to Barcelona next week from 25 – 28 February. Tonio will drive for the first two days, with Adrian Sutil taking over for the final two days.