Figge upbeat for final races

The American, who topped the morning times on both days and ended the Monday and Tuesday tests in fourth and fifth places respectively, admitted that he also gained satisfaction from starting to prove himself to his rivals.

Said Figge: "Obviously everyone wants to better themselves all the time, but in my case I also wanted to address a bit of criticism, which at times has been deserved, at other times hasn't.

"It's been hard, you know. Obviously the whole team is new to the series - not a single member of our squad had previous Champ Car experience except Ryan [Dalziel, former teammate] who had done one race. That's a steep learning curve!

"That's why tests like this are so crucial to us. When you're in a new team and you're just going to the races, it's just about keeping your head above water.

"You cannot afford to use any of the weekend's sessions as extended test sessions and experiment; you tend to stick with what you know. So you end up trying the same things over and over, doing the same things over and over, and you sometimes get lucky, and often don't."

Figge explained the reason for his improved performance at Sebring was an improvement in his DP01-Cosworth's front-end grip. He said: "All year I've been suffering a lot of understeer, which for me, for my style of driving, is about the worst way for the car to be.

"Now with these changes we've made, I can really attack the corner entry and it's just made a huge difference. It's just as well really, because we were pretty dismal in Europe, weren't we?"

However, the rookie shied away from making predictions for the final two races of the Champ Car season in Surfers Paradise and Mexico City.

"I'm not going to start saying anything stupid about what we might be capable of in those last two races. Perhaps Sebring just played to our strengths - we've tested here before so we had data, and maybe this course suits my style.

"But all I can say is to get away from the stress of a race weekend, and allow ourselves to stretch for different things has just been very useful. We'll have a good baseline to start working from in Australia."