Vitantonio Liuzzi opened Team India’s three-day test at the Jerez de la Frontera circuit in southern Spain as the Formula One team, part-owned by Vijay Mallya, pushed on with its programme of getting to grips with the new electronic package.

After a wet start to the day, the Italian driver completed 47 laps, the small number a knock-on effect of the numerous red flag periods that punctuated the day.

Liuzzi was also hampered by minor hydraulic issues in the morning and the afternoon’s running, which again limited the mileage the team could achieve.

His best lap was a 1:23.035, set in the afternoon on Monday.

Fisichella to take over

Fellow Italian Giancarlo Fisichella will take over with German youngster Adrian Sutil set to get behind the wheel for the final day of testing on Wednesday.

Liuzzi would have liked to have some more laps under his belt but nonetheless felt the team was going in the right direction.

“We have improved from the last test we did here and the car seemed to respond better than last time,” Liuzzi said.

“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. We did not put in too many laps but the few laps we did I think were pretty positive,” he said.

Mike Gascoyne, chief technical officer was not too unhappy with day one of the practice session either.

“A reasonably productive day of testing, and good to shake out the cobwebs and start again in 2008,” he said.

“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,” Gascoyne  said.