Robert Doornbos, who is still being linked with a drive for Toro Rosso this season is currently testing for Minardi Team USA at the Champ Car tests in Sebring.

Having secretly carried out a Champ Car test last month with Forsythe Racing, Doornbos tested a Champ Car for the second time on Tuesday.

In a black carbon-fibre look car, Doornbos and the team used the entire day to get a good first impression of the brand new car. And they succeeded well, despite some small technical problems. The 25-year old Dutchman finished the morning session in 8th and the afternoon session in 11th position.

Doornbos' test for Paul Stoddart's newly founded team should be seen as a second acquaintance with this American race series. In the open test, which started on Tuesday, all participating teams used the new Panoz DP01 car for the first time. Both the morning session and the afternoon session proved not to be entirely trouble-free for Minardi Team USA. During the course of the day Doornbos and the team faced some software and braking issues.

Today, Doornbos will continue testing at the 2.565 kilometre long circuit before he flies back to Europe.

"First of all, I want to thank Paul and the team for this opportunity," said the Dutch driver. "The new car differs quite from the Lola, both from a technical point of view as in terms of driving style. In a positive way that is! The car looks very good and surely has huge potential.

"We used this first day to get a good feeling with the car, therefore I didn't use any new sets of tyres or pushed for a quick lap time. We did face some technical trouble which somewhat limited our track time, but that's not strange at all, as we brought a completely new car to the track. Hopefully I can rack up some more serious mileage tomorrow morning!"