Disappointed Force India duo still hopeful of points

A couple of long faces were in order in Force India's garage after Saturday's qualifying session in which Esteban Ocon and Sergio Perez both under-performed their expectations.

The pink duo will line up P13 and P15 respectively on Sunday's Spanish Grand Prix grid, but both men feel the basic foundation of their upgraded VJM11 has improved and should allow an opportunity for points this afternoon.

"I am a bit disappointed about our end result because we didn’t really have the pace we expected," said Ocon after qualifying.

"I was happy with how the car was set up and we can see the updates we brought here are working, but we need a little bit more to close the gap with the front of the pack.

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"I am still feeling positive for the race. We are not too far away from the top ten and our race pace is not bad. We need a good start and then we’ll see what we can do.

"Last year I gained five places from start to finish and I’d be happy to do the same this year."

A puzzled Perez pointed to the Force India's tyres as the culprit of his own lack of speed.

"Q1 was okay and the car and tyres were working well, but in Q2 we lost so much performance," said the Mexican.

"It’s really odd because we used the same strategy as we did in Q1, but the tyres behaved totally differently.

"We could not switch them on and the car was sliding around, which is why my lap was four tenths slower than Q1. I still hope we can fight back tomorrow and come away with some points."

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