Force India F1 car 'easier than expected' says Yelloly

[John S]

Also his best lap full second ahead of FIF1 Spain Quali. 

I know you can't compare the two days weather, choice of tyres and track condition wise between Sat quali and Tues test, but that's still a heck of a performance.

However I'm sure it's not quite all plain sailing to move from GP2 to F1 in an actual race seat. 

Nick Yelloly says driving a Formula 1 car was 'easier than expected' as he made his test debut with Force India at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya on Tuesday.

"It was easier than expected," he said when asked about his day. "The runs I've done in the simulator have helped quite a lot with my performance and in terms of getting of top of the car really early on.

"The biggest change for me was the power steering, just how easy it is compared to the GP2 car physically. I thought it would be harder but I actually find it quite easy, so that was nice.

"We've been going through plenty of things today," he said. "Some simulator correlation, so just seeing what different setups do what, so I can then see if they are same in the simulator as they are in the car or not.

"Then some aero work and then some performance runs, 10 run laps really, not full performance. So I think we still have a fair amount of time in the bag."

Edited extracts from story on GPupdate.net, Tues 12th May.

[Jericoke]

I think these comments should send up a red flag.

An F1 car shouldn't be coddling the drivers, not compared with a jump up from a mere one level down. 

They need to be a beast tamed by the best drivers, not a Sunday drive where the car does the work!  They should chew up and spit out an F2 driver on their first go, no matter how much simulator time they have!

[Alianora La Canta]

Can't say I'm surprised. The Force India is amongst the kindest cars to drive on the grid, and we've now had Max Verstappen (one season, 3rd in F3 Euroseries) and Daniil Kyvat (five seasons needed to win GP3, the step below F3 Euroseries) thrive. Andre Lotterer had little trouble with even the difficult-to-drive Caterham (when it worked!) despite having not driven single-seaters for years.

It makes the points system for 2016 laughable. Most of the people capable of driving a F1 car won't be allowed to because they haven't paid enough money into FIA-specially-anointed series. Meanwhile, F3, GP2 and F3.5 continue to be more challenging than the series that is meant to be the pinnacle.