By Karl King
December 5 2007

On a fairly cold day in Jerez on Tuesday, Force India ran two unfamiliar faces to the team - in the way of Franck Montagny and F1 veteran Giancarlo Fisichella. The Italian set the fastest time of the two, just over a tenth up on Montagny, although this was on the slick tyres being trialled for 2009. Separated by F3 driver Nico Hulkenburg, Fisi's best was a 1:24.424 compared to Franck's 1:21.559

The timesheets were dominated by Nick Heidfeld and Jenson Button, who were significantly faster than the other 18 drivers, the pair on the grippy slicks.

Fisichella, who's unsure whether Renault want to retain his services next year, had his first run in an F1 car since the last race in Brazil. "We did have a couple of issues so I didn't run as much as I would have liked; with new tyres I had a problem with the hydraulic pressure, and when I tried out the slick tyres there was a problem on the diff so we didn't get a proper idea of how the tyres will work. All the same I do think it's been a positive day though and a good basis for tomorrow."

Montagny added, "It's been a good day. We did have a bit of bad luck with our new tyre runs though - we had two new sets of tyres, and with the first set I stopped and the other there was a red flag. It was good fun and nice to work with the team. It was interesting to see how everyone works and I think we did quite a reasonable job together. Unfortunately the track is quite hard on tyres and we had a lot of degradation, which doesn't help you do all the set up work we wanted to do today, but I enjoyed it all the same and I think the team got some useful information."

The team covered over 500km in total and will continue on Wednesday with Fisichella being joined by Christian Klien.