Christian Klien was highly satisfied after completing a two-day Formula One test with the Etihad Aldar Force India F1 Team at the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona, Spain, last week. He has now been invited by the team to take part in further testing in Jerez in December.

This was the young Austrian driver's first outing behind the wheel of an F1 car since August but he was immediately on the pace starting with a half day of testing on Wednesday. The team was running the car using the 2008 regulations that include a ban on traction control and use of a standardised ECU. Christian had not previously driven an F1 car without traction control but had no difficulty adjusting his driving style to suit the revised systems.

Christian then completed a full day of testing on Thursday, including some long race-simulation runs. In total he completed over 150 laps without incident.

After clocking the team's fastest time of the test, the 24 year-old commented: "The times were close but it’s really nice to be quickest after being out of an F1 cockpit for so long and I am very much looking forward to the Jerez test. I got used to being back in the car after a couple of runs and was able to focus on working with the team to help them get the best out of the car. I was especially pleased with my long distance runs and really impressed with the cars reliability."

"The team has been fantastic to work with, extremely professional and very motivated; we worked well together and with the feedback I was able to give to give we made improvements to the car over the two-days. Not having the normal electronic driver aids also made things quite interesting, as there’s much more pressure and it’s easier to make mistakes, but it was not a problem. I’m very happy with the test and feel we achieved a lot together in these two days."

Klien's fastest time of the test was a 1:23.084 lap which he achieved on the second day.