Friday: Many tests at Force India
With a dark affair hanging over him, Adrian Sutil doesn't know what tomorrow holds and must do his utmost in the race to best satisfy his team. Meanwhile, Paul di Resta continues his learning.
Adrian Sutil – 15th, then 19th
« I drove with the new aero parts this morning and this afternoon, but to be honest, we haven’t managed to find the right setup yet. The guys did a great job getting everything on the car, but it’s never easy to introduce so many new things in one weekend and test them properly. Making sure the new package works is probably more difficult than we thought, and that’s why we don’t seem competitive today. So we have a lot of work to do tonight to see if we can improve things for tomorrow.
Paul di Resta – — and 17th
« I missed the morning session, so there was a lot of work to be done in the afternoon. It was the first time I was in the car with the new package in full, and we knew there was a big change compared to what we were used to. My feeling in the car was clearly different, and it is clear that we have a lot of work to understand the new parts and get the most out of them. By the end of the afternoon, we had definitely improved the car, but we need to sit down together tonight and think about our approach for tomorrow. »
Nico Hülkenberg – 14th and —
« This morning, the car was equipped with parts from the old specification, so we could have a good basis for comparison with the new parts on Adrian [Sutil]’s car. I think it helped us understand the differences between the two and we collected some useful data. The only difficulty was the limitation of the tires, as it’s hard to do a lot of useful runs with just one set of hard tires. »
Dominic Harlow
« We had good weather conditions here in Barcelona except for a bit too much wind compared to what we would have wanted, and it should be the same throughout the weekend. Our program was focused on aero development, and we were able to make very useful comparisons. Once we have the opportunity to review all our data, we will draw conclusions on whether it has been a step forward. The grip level today was quite low in the morning and was just starting to improve by the end of free practice 2. We had a small telemetry issue with Adrian’s car, and he was therefore hindered by the traffic in his last outing with a new set of soft tires, and of course, he lost a bit of time on track. In any case, it was a reliable introduction of new parts which is always satisfying, but we have work to do tonight to improve our performance in qualifying.»
