Force India unable to get tyres to work at Singapore
Qualifying for the Singapore Grand Prix saw Sahara Force India’s Adrian Sutil qualify in P15, ahead of his teammate Paul Di Resta in P17. Despite their hopes, the team failed to curb its poor qualifying performances recently.
Adrian Sutil, VJM06-03, 15th, 1:45.185: “P15 is disappointing because it’s some way off where we were aiming to be. We are just too slow to fight for the top ten at the moment and everyone is working hard to try and understand where we are losing out. All we can do is keep fighting tomorrow and if we do a good strategy we can hopefully gain some places.”
Paul Di Resta, VJM06-04, 17th, 1:46.121: “I think we simply didn’t have enough speed today and all weekend I’ve been struggling with my one-lap pace. I think we are more optimised for the race and the speed looks better over long runs, with low degradation of the tyres. But we’ve got some work to do tomorrow if we want to be fighting for points. We came here and tried to replicate as much as we could from last year, but we’ve just not been able to find the zone. It’s a tough, long race ahead of us and it’s difficult to overtake, but anything can happen and we will keep fighting.”
Dr Vijay Mallya, Team Principal & Managing Director: “Singapore has traditionally been one of our stronger tracks, but for various reasons it’s not suited us this year. We’ve not been able to get the car in the optimal working range and it’s clear that we are not getting the most from the tyres. There’s a big task facing us tomorrow if we want to come away with points, but history has shown that the Singapore Grand Prix can be an unpredictable race. Our long run pace has looked more encouraging so hopefully we can exploit that tomorrow and make the most of events in the race to maximise our strategies.”
