Force India Spanish GP Friday Practice Report

2011 Spanish Grand Prix Free Practice 1 & 2 Report - 20 May

FP1 objectives: Adrian – Initial evaluation of new aero components, balance checks and reliability tests Nico – Set-up and tyre baseline with one set of new hard tyres, brake system tests

Adrian Sutil, Force India

Photo by: xpb.cc

FP2 objectives: Adrian – Set-up development with new aero components Paul – Assessment of new aero components, balance checks and tyre evaluation

Adrian Sutil (car 14, VJM04/04)

FP1: P15 1:28.163 (22 laps)
FP2: P19 1:27.123 (20 laps)

“I ran with all our new aero parts this morning and in the afternoon, but to be honest we haven’t managed to find the sweet spot yet. The guys did a great job to get everything on the car, but it’s never easy to introduce so many new things during a weekend and to test them properly. Getting this new package to work is probably going to be more difficult than we thought and that’s why we didn’t look that competitive today. So we have work to do this evening to see if we can improve things for tomorrow.”

Paul Di Resta (car 15, VJM04/02)

Paul di Resta, Force India F1 Team

Photo by: xpb.cc

FP1: Did not participate
FP2: P17 1:26.073 (32 laps)

“I missed the morning session so there was a big workload to get through in the afternoon. It was the first time I’d been in the car with the entire new package and we always knew it would be a big change compared to what we were used to. The car feels very different and it’s clear we have lots of work to do to understand the new parts and get the most from them. By the end of the afternoon we had definitely improved the car quite a bit, but we need to sit down tonight and think about how we should approach tomorrow.”

Nico Hülkenberg (car 15, VJM04/02)

FP1: P14 1:28.027 (26 laps)
FP2: Did not participate

“This morning my car was fitted with all the old-spec parts so that we could have a good baseline to make a comparison with the new parts on Adrian’s car. I think it helped us get an understanding of where the differences are and provided some useful data. The only difficulty was the limitation on the tyres because it’s hard to do many useful runs when you have just one set of hard tyres.”

Dominic Harlow, Circuit Engineering Director

“On the whole we had good weather conditions here in Barcelona apart from a bit more wind than we would have liked and that looks set to continue for the weekend. Our programme concentrated on aero development and we were able to make some very useful comparisons. Once we’ve had an opportunity to review all the data we will draw conclusions that will take us forward.

The grip level was quite low in the morning and only began to improve at the end of FP2. There was a minor telemetry issue with Adrian's car and that meant he was hampered by traffic during his final outing on new soft tyres, and of course he lost a bit of track time. Otherwise it was a reliable introduction of quite a few new components, which is always pleasing, but we've some work to do overnight to improve our performance for qualifying.”

Source: Force India