Better for Force India in Shanghai
Despite a first day marked by a few incidents on the track, the two Force India drivers are satisfied with the work they've done and are looking forward to a more competitive weekend than the last few.
Since the beginning of the season, the Force India team has fallen short of expectations. Despite strong races from Nico Hülkenberg in Australia and Bahrain, Vijay Mallya’s men believed they could regularly fight for the podium after a successful winter.
Even if the timesheets don’t really show it, the team seems to be making progress according to the German driver’s remarks after this first day of testing: “I’m quite happy today. There’s still a lot of work to do, of course, but we’ve made progress on the usual tire work, and we’ve tried different things on the car,” Hülkenberg says.
Lap times seem very tight this weekend, which could give ideas to the 2015 24 Hours of Le Mans winner: « Tires will be the key factor in the race. We can also see on the timing sheet that everyone is quite close. This could be interesting… »
For Sergio Pérez, who has been struggling since the beginning of the season, this start to the weekend is focused on hard work: « The track conditions weren’t ideal today, there was a lot of wind, and it was hard to be consistent. We also lost some time this morning due to the red flags. I think the main issue remains tire degradation, and we still need to try and learn to improve ourselves and also to improve the car’s balance. »
