Force India
Nico Hülkenberg: “It has been a pretty straightforward day of practice – getting through the programme with no dramas and collecting a lot of data. The performance looks good, but it’s only Friday and I would expect everybody to step up their game tomorrow ahead of qualifying. The car has shown good potential, but there is still work to be done to improve the balance, especially during the long runs where I didn’t feel totally happy. On the whole though, we’ve done a lot of our homework and things are going to plan.”
Sergio Perez: “It was a solid day of practice and I’m happy with the work we’ve done today. There are still some things we need to change and analyse to improve for tomorrow, but I’m already feeling confident with the car. Track conditions were very good and the temperatures were quite cool compared with previous years. We managed to do long runs on both tyre compounds so we’ve got a lot of information to prepare for the race.”
Dr Vijay Mallya, Team Principal & Managing Director: “Today was a very important day and it was satisfying to complete our programme without any major interruptions. We had several new upgrades to evaluate and a very comprehensive run plan in order to obtain a lot of data, not just for this weekend but also for the remainder of the season. Both drivers were quite happy and comfortable with the car right from the start and they steadily improved the balance as the two sessions progressed. The first indications from the timesheets show that, as predicted, the midfield battle in qualifying will be very close and every fraction of a second will count. We’re also well aware that track position is crucial as there aren't many overtaking opportunities around the circuit, which makes qualifying well all the more important.”
