14th and 15th for Force India duo
Both Force India Formula One Team drivers made it through to Q2 this afternoon at Monte Carlo as Paul Di Resta qualified in P14 and Adrian Sutil in P15. The team will now try to optimise the strategy for the race to be able to fight for points.
Paul Di Resta (car 15, VJM04/02)
FP3: P11 1:16.990
Q1: P17 1:16.813
Q2: P14 1:16.118
Adrian Sutil (car 14, VJM04/04)
FP3: P15 1:18.069
Q1: P16 1:16.600
Q2: P15 1:16.121
Paul Di Resta: “Once again I think that P14 is a fair reflection of our pace this weekend. Everybody knows that qualifying is very important here and so I pushed hard to get as high up the grip as possible, but the race is long and anything can happen tomorrow afternoon. So I’ll just try my best to stay out of trouble and try to make some progress with the strategy. It’s my first weekend racing a Formula One car at Monaco so I’ve lots to learn but I’m really looking forward to the race tomorrow.”
Adrian Sutil: “It’s disappointing that we couldn’t fight for Q3, but the pace was not there today. I was bit unlucky on my last run in Q2 when Petrov wasn’t watching his mirrors and I had to abort one of my flying laps. I did another lap, but my tyres were going off by then and so I probably could have been a little bit higher up. For the race tomorrow we know that overtaking is difficult and making the strategy work won’t be easy, but we will be ready for any opportunities that come our way.”
Robert Fernley, Deputy Team Principal: “The qualifying session at Monaco is arguably the most important of the year because we know how hard it is to overtake around here. So we went all out today to get both cars as high up the grid as possible and hoping we might squeeze through to Q3. In the end we just missed out, but all the times were incredibly close with just a few tenths making the difference.
“For the race tomorrow we will try and make the strategy work to bring Paul and Adrian into contention. Historically this race has seen quite a high attrition rate and so we need to capitalise on any incidents in the race to move forward and hopefully challenge for points.“
