Sutil: Spyker gaining grip in every area 22 Feb 2007
Spyker’s Adrian Sutil came away impressed with the team’s progress after they concluded testing in Valencia, Spain on Wednesday. Sutil, who completed just under 200 laps during the three-day session, believes that work to improve the new F8-VII’s grip has already started to pay off.
“We had some good runs in the last hour and tried out some different set-ups and control systems settings,” explained Sutil. “In the entry to the corner we have a lot more stability and mid-corner there's not so much understeer. In every area the car has more grip. Next time out we'll continue to work on set-up and different configurations and try to get more performance out of the tyres."
Improvements in the German’s lap times over the three days certainly seem to back-up his claims. While on Tuesday his best was a 1m 13.678s, on Wednesday - after the team spent the night working through set-up options - he clocked a fastest lap of 1m 12.490s, despite damp track conditions.
Fellow Spyker race driver Christijan Albers, who took charge of the second F8-VII on Wednesday, was equally hopeful. “We’ve done a lot of work on set-up and now the balance is better I can now push a bit more on the first lap with new tyres. Looking forward to Barcelona we’ve still got some work to do but we’re going in the right direction, which is very encouraging.”
Spyker have covered over 3,796 kilometres in the F8-VII since the beginning of the year and will now journey to Barcelona for their final pre-season test ahead of the Australian Grand Prix in March. They will spend three days at the Circuit de Catalunya from next Tuesday.
