Force India cars finish just out of points
It was a tough afternoon for Sahara Force India as Paul Di Resta and Nico Hulkenberg just missed out on points in the Canadian Grand Prix, coming home P11 and P12 respectively. The car's behavior on different tyre compounds was the crucial factor that influenced the race result.
Paul Di Resta, VJM05/02, 11th:
Tyre strategy: Used supersoft, New soft, New soft
“I think we all feel a bit disappointed to miss out on points today. To qualify eighth and run as high as fifth shows we were well placed and things were running smoothly for the first few laps. Then I seemed to suffer with some high tyre degradation on the super-softs so we pitted quite early, but on the soft tyres we just didn’t have the performance to race the cars around us and we slipped back. It’s a missed opportunity but sometimes you get weekends like this. We need to go away and analyse things, lift our heads high and bounce back harder next time.”
Nico Hulkenberg, VJM05/03, 12th:
Tyre strategy: New soft, New supersoft, New soft
“Our result today is a bit disappointing. We thought we could get in the points, but every race is hard to predict this year and we were not able to deliver what we hoped for. Ultimately we didn’t have enough speed today and suffered with high tyre wear compared to the cars around us. We had to do a two-stop strategy while a lot of our rivals were able to stop once and they got a big benefit from that.”
Dr Vijay Mallya, Team Principal & Managing Director:
“A hot afternoon’s work and unfortunately we didn’t come away with the results we wanted. The car has shown strong pace throughout the weekend, but for whatever reason we could not find the sweet spot today. It’s a shame because for the first stint we looked very strong and Paul moved up to fifth place before his first stop. But we were not able to make the super-soft tyres last long enough and we didn’t have enough pace on the soft tyres. So we leave here feeling that we didn’t quite realise our potential, but determined to learn from the lessons of today before we arrive in Valencia.”
