Not a great day for Force India under the flood lights
The Force India F1 Team had a difficult time under the lights of the Marina Bay circuit in today's qualifying session in Singapore. Adrian Sutil and Tonio Liuzzi eased through to Q2, however the second segment proved more problematic.
Adrian's outing was compromised with traffic on his outlap and, with his tyres not up to optimum temperature, could only record the 16th quickest time. Tonio put in a good first run but reported an issue with the front brakes on his second. The Italian posted the 17th quickest time.
Adrian Sutil (car 14): "It was a very frustrating session for us overall. The first segment went OK, out on the hard tyres and able to get in the top ten, but then when we switched to the soft for Q2 we couldn't find much of an improvement. We had less grip than on the hard tyre and I got into some traffic on my outlap and the flying lap was compromised. It just all went wrong so I'm disappointed. It's going to be tough tomorrow as overtaking is hard but if there's a safety car or anything unexpected we'll do our best to take advantage of it."
Tonio Liuzzi (car 15): "A very disappointing outcome to the session for us. We had the pace in Q1 but then in Q2 on the first lap of my second run I had problems with the front brakes. It was very strange as we've not had this problem over this weekend. Unfortunately because of this issue I lost the best of the tyres on what would have been a better lap. We will start at least 16th after the penalties to some of the others in front but we will have to hope for something to happen during the race that we can take advantage of as it's very hard to overtake here."
Otmar Szafnauer, chief operating officer: "Overall it's not been a great day for us. We were expecting more based on the form we showed yesterday and the general balance of the car, but we hit a couple of problems that took us by surprise in Q2. We start further down the field than we would have hoped so we will have to look at all possible strategies for tomorrow's race. As we've seen in previous years anything can happen with the walls so close so we still hope to be able to make up some ground."
Adrian Sutil (car 14, VJM03/03):
FP3: 9th 1:49.916 (15 laps)
Q1: 10th 1:48.496 (6 laps)
Q2: 16th 1:48.899 (8 laps)
Tonio Liuzzi (car 15, VJM03/01):
FP3: 16th 1:50.868 (16 laps)
Q1: 14th 1:48.988 (4 laps)
Q2: 17th 1:48.961 (7 laps)
