Force India expected to slip back
The Force India Formula One Team will start tomorrow's Hungarian Grand Prix with Giancarlo Fisichella in 19th position and Adrian Sutil in 20th following a tight qualifying session at a scorching Hungaroring.
The duo completed three runs each in the first 20 minute segment of Qualifying, and pushed hard to improve on the earlier morning practice session's form. Despite the back-row positions, their respective times were both within one second of 10th position, notwithstanding the return to the standard configuration gearbox.
The team will now look to make up places in the 70 lap race tomorrow, which is due to start at 14:00hrs local time.
Adrian Sutil: "It was a hot, tough qualifying and I am not 100% happy with the session. The tyres did not behave as we expected and I had lots of graining, which meant we couldn't get a good balance out of the car. I decided to run the harder set of tyres in the end for my fastest lap, but at least I didn't get the effects of the graining with them. Overall I'm not that happy, but let's see what happens tomorrow."
Giancarlo Fisichella: "Conditions today were tough but actually that was the maximum we could do. The target was to do a 1min 21.7 or 21.8 and we did a 21.6 so that was the most we could get out of the car. The balance was not too bad, but unfortunately the grip level is still very poor. I think we're not particularly quick round here and we have to accept that, but we are still quite close we are to the others."
Mike Gascoyne, chief technical officer: "I think we expected to slip back a bit from our closest rivals due to not running the seamless shift, and that proved to be the case. Giancarlo pretty much got the most out of it he could, but unfortunately Adrian couldn't get a decent lap together so was a way off his optimum time. We know our race pace is better than our qualifying pace and although this makes life difficult at this track, we have to get two cars to the end and do a professional job."
Dr. Vijay Mallya, chairman and managing director: "It would be very easy to say we're on the back row again, but we've been eliminated from Q1 with a BMW, a Honda and a Williams, so clearly this is a very competitive field here yet again. One second from the top 10 shows we're getting closer. Although we have had to revert back to the standard shift box for the weekend, we are very optimistic about running the seamless shift gearbox and look forward to actually racing it in Valencia."
