Friday: Force India closes the gap

Adrian Sutil – 8th and 11th

« A rather positive day for me. We had a lot of work assessing the new aerodynamic parts, but it went well, and the car’s balance was correct for my first stint. We worked a bit to improve certain things like braking stability, which is particularly important here. As usual, I used both tire compounds in the afternoon so that we have good data for tomorrow. The softs were very consistent and the degradation wasn’t too bad, so I think it’s the best type of tire ».

Paul di Resta – Non-participation and 14th

« The way things unfolded today was quite unfortunate. Nico’s accident this morning meant my car wasn’t ready for the start of the second session, and I had to sit and wait. The guys did an excellent job getting everything fixed in time so I could get out for the last minutes of the session, but I only managed three timed laps. This means there will be a lot of work to do during the third free practice session tomorrow morning to make up for lost time ».

Dominic Harlow

« We experienced low grip conditions with changing track conditions, as we expected on a street circuit. There were many tests on our schedule today, but unfortunately, we lost a lot of test time on one of the cars following Nico’s incident. There were no serious damages, but a lot of work to be done in a short amount of time. This reduced Paul’s program to a few laps, but we are confident that this time will be recovered tomorrow. We accomplished some good work with Adrian, and it seems that the new aerodynamic elements we brought here are working well, although there is still work to be done on the car’s balance. It seems we are reducing the gap with the cars ahead of us, but obviously, we don’t know anything about their programs, so it will be an interesting qualifying session tomorrow ».