Friday: Force India still has work to do
If the Sahara Force India drivers experienced smooth practice sessions, collecting valuable data, the evening will still be busy in order to find the performance that Nico Hülkenberg's and Paul di Resta's car is still missing. On track during Free Practice 1, Jules Bianchi believes that it was his best Friday morning practice session so far.
Nico Hülkenberg – 12th and 13th:
« I think it’s still difficult to know where our performance level stands at the moment, but we probably need to raise our game and improve a bit by tomorrow if we want to fight for points. The balance isn’t perfect yet, so we need to work tonight to bring the car closer to its best level.
Aside from that, we wrapped up our program, collected data, so it was a rather normal Friday.
Paul Di Resta – 15th [in Free Practice 2]:
« I think we learned quite a bit tonight, but there is a lot of work ahead of us to understand where we stand and where we can improve. This circuit is essentially about grip in low and medium-speed corners, and that’s where we’ll need to focus tonight.
In terms of tires, we collected a lot of data today, so we will work hard to ensure we are in the right operating window for qualifying and the race.
Jules Bianchi – 15th [in Free Practice 1]:
« I think this was probably my best Friday morning practice session so far. I’ve done a lot of testing here before so I’m very familiar with the track and felt very comfortable. The program was quite simple with three stints, lots of laps, and we improved the car with each stint. The track improved significantly during the session but the tires degraded quite quickly so it was difficult to improve my times towards the end of the session. »
