Sutil has perfect beginning of home race at Hockenheim
The Force India F1 Team's German Grand Prix weekend got off to a positive start in today's practice sessions at Hockenheim. Adrian Sutil had the perfect beginning to his home race when he set the quickest time in the opening session and then demonstrated a solid long run pace in the second, while Tonio Liuzzi captured the ninth quickest time in FP1.
Heavy rain marked the early part of the opening session, however Adrian was able to confidently negotiate the conditions to top the timesheets, more than one second ahead of Ferrari's Felipe Massa.
With the rain easing for the second session the focus switched to evaluating the dry tyre options available. Both Adrian and Tonio completed long runs however with periodic light rain over the 90 minutes the pair just missed the window to set the optimum lap times. Nevertheless the duo completed their respective programmes to establish a strong baseline set-up for the weekend.
Adrian Sutil (car 14): "The first session was obviously very good. We went out on the extremes first of all and I could set some quick times and felt very confident in the conditions. When a drier line came out later on we then switched to the intermediate tyres and, again, the car behaved very well and I came out P1, which was a nice feeling in front of my home crowd. In the afternoon I think we had a good balance on the car, but we put new sets on just when the rain came so I couldn't do a good lap time. The position is not really representative of where we are here and we know we can be much stronger. The long run pace was good and I have a positive feeling for tomorrow."
Tonio Liuzzi (car 15): "It was not an easy day because of the weather: in the morning it was raining and then in the afternoon the track started wet but got drier all the time. I think the pace we've shown here is quite positive and overall we are in good shape at this point in the weekend. In the morning we still had some problems going into the corners and then on the straights so I couldn't quite get a clear run. In the afternoon though we had a good session and we understood a few areas for tomorrow, working very closely with Bridgestone to get the most out of the tyres."
Dominic Harlow, chief race engineer: "One wet and one almost completely dry session today. During the morning we ran both the wet and the intermediate tyres, establishing the crossovers and trying to get a feel for the way the track was drying. The car was quite well balanced in the tricky conditions and Adrian set a good pace. In FP2 we ran our option tyres just at the moment it started to spit with rain, so probably lost the best of the performance from them. All the same quite an interesting scenario this weekend and we now have the information to build on for qualifying and the race."
Adrian Sutil (car 14, VJM03/03):
FP1: 1st 1:25.701 (20 laps)
FP2: 14th 1:17.701 (38 laps)
Tonio Liuzzi (car 15, VJM03/01):
FP1: 9th 1:28.300 (19 laps)
FP2: 16th 1:17.871 (33 laps)
