MONTMELO, Spain -- Despite the team's quiet start to the winter Esteban Ocon reckons Force India is on a similar footing to Red Bull at this stage of pre-season testing.
Ocon completed 130 laps on Wednesday as Force India enjoyed a productive day, although he finished 12th of 14 drivers in terms of outright lap times. The team completed the fewest laps in the opening week and has rarely troubled the top of the order in any of the six days in Barcelona, but Ocon says the team is not chasing performance at this stage.
"We are happy with what we've achieved," he said. "130 laps, it was that we needed. We understood plenty today. There's still plenty to analyse but this journey will make us understand plenty.
"We are not working on performance. We working more on understanding the car, understanding how to feel good with the car and on the balance, and more on the longer runs we were working. We had some good results so we are happy."
Although the team is yet to show anything close to the true potential of the VJM11 Ocon has lofty expectations for the team which has finished best of the rest behind Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull for the past two seasons.
"[Replicating that] is the target. We will see where we are in Melbourne, that's the most important. Today was a good day, plenty of mileage under our belt and long runs look promising, not far off Red Bull I think so we are quite happy."
When told Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo finished top of the Wednesday's session with a new track record of the Circuit de Catalunya, Ocon smiled and said: "I know they were P1, you will see."
Ocon is set to return to the car on the final day of testing, with his teammate Sergio Perez due to run on Thursday.