Force India targets double points finish
Sahara Force India made the most of a competitive qualifying hour as Nico Hulkenberg qualified in P11 ahead of teammate Paul Di Resta in P15. With a grid penalty for Pastor Maldonado, both drivers will move up a place on the starting grid.
P11 (will start P10) Nico Hulkenberg (VJM05/03)
Q1: 1:15.418
Q2: 1:15.421
“I had a pretty good run in both Q1 and Q2 – managing to avoid the traffic and my quick lap in Q2 was pretty neat so I don’t think I could have found more time. In fact, I almost set identical laptimes in Q1 and Q2. So I’m pretty happy with where I’m starting and hopefully we can come away with some points tomorrow. It’s always a fun race, a special place to be and we will be pushing hard to maximise the strategy and get a strong result.”
P15 (will start P14) Paul Di Resta (VJM05/02)
Q1: 1:16.062
Q2: 1:15.718
“I felt pretty happy with the balance of the car during FP2 on Thursday, but unfortunately it didn’t carry over for qualifying. We haven’t changed much on the car, but I was struggling with the rear and with traction. So I’m not as far up the grid as I would like to be and it leaves us with a hard task tomorrow, especially because it’s so difficult to overtake here. But we also know that Monaco can be an unpredictable race and I hope the strategy can help us fight back tomorrow.”
Dr Vijay Mallya, Team Principal & Managing Director: “It’s well known that the qualifying hour in Monaco is the most important of the season, so we worked hard to make sure we had optimised the set-up for qualifying. Nico did an excellent job and only missed out on making Q3 by a tenth of a second. In fact, he was only half a second off the quickest time in Q2, which shows once again how closely-matched all the teams are. Paul didn’t feel totally comfortable with his car, but I’m confident he can bounce back and have a strong race starting from P14. I always enjoy the Monaco Grand Prix and we’ve seen in the past that anything can happen here, so we will be targeting points finishes with both cars.”
