Liuzzi's first test as FI driver

Tonio Liuzzi emerged from the Force India garage in te Jerez pitlane on Monday for his first duties as official test and reserve driver. The Italian was hampered by minor hydraulic issues during the day, coupled with various red flags hindering track running time. Nevertheless he put in a solid job, setting a best lap of 1m23.035 in the afternoon, good enough for the 11th fastest slot.

Tonio's time was almost a tenth faster than that of Kazuki Nakajima who was 12th, and over a second faster than Toyota's Timo Glock. James Rossiter rounded off the timesheets for Super Aguri, completing only 10 laps with a best lap of over 15 seconds slower than the leading pace set by World Champion Kimi Raikkonen.

Liuzzi commented, 'We have improved from the last test we did here and the car seemed to respond better than last time, so that was already better. It was quite a difficult day though as we had a few mechanical problems and we had to wait in the garage for a while, so we didn't put in too many laps, but the few laps we did I think were pretty positive. It was just unfortunate that the issues stopped us doing some more, but it is a three day test and we can look forward to some more development. We are going in the right direction and still have a lot of work to do.'

Chief technical officer, Mike Gascoyne added, 'A reasonably productive day of testing, and good to shake out the cobwebs and start again in 2008. As the morning was wet we did some running in both wet and dry conditions, but we had a couple of hydraulic issues throughout the day that limited the lap count. Overall though a reasonably useful day and it was good to start working with Tonio, who did a very good job for the team.'

Testing will continue on Tuesday with Fisichella behind the wheel.