No Force India testing until March

(GMM) F1 test action will resume in mid January, but Force India will not get back up to speed until March, it has emerged.

Following the Silverstone based team's Barcelona outing in November, the outfit was not seen again, as designers turned their attention to the new McLaren-Mercedes collaboration for 2009.

Force India will next year benefit from extensive McLaren input, including the powertrain, gearbox, hydraulics, KERS and even chassis components.

The team's German driver Adrian Sutil, however, admitted that sitting out the tests until March, less than a month before the 2009 season starts, is "a problem".

"But I can't change it," he told F1's official website. "And if I'm honest, it's better to start in March with a good car than to test in February with a bad one."