Adrian Sutil has revealed that he has struggled with Pirelli's latest medium compound tire in testing at Jerez this week.
The German got his hands on Force India's 2011 racer for the first time yesterday, and he said he was pleased with his first two days in the car. However, Sutil expressed a lack of confidence in a new specification of medium tire that he tried for the first time in this test.
"The medium tire we have here is different than before, and I was not so confident on that, not so happy," Sutil said at the end of the day. "The tire is very hard, quite a lot harder than what we had before. But it doesn't last longer, for some reason.
"It's very slow in the first few laps, then the degradation starts very early still. Even after five to six laps the degradation starts again, and I was expecting much more."
Sutil added that he was not criticizing Formula 1's new tire supplier Pirelli for the tires it has produced.
"[Pirelli] probably go a different way [to Bridgestone], which is good for the sport," he said. "It's a big challenge to drive on the limit with these tires. They are very oversteery, very low grip, so it is very easy to make mistakes. The difference you have between the compounds is very big, but in general I like them."