Force India were left a second off the pace of their rivals as they struggled to get heat and grip into the new Pirelli tyres.
All the teams are only guessing how the tyres will degrade and perform at the moment and Force India will have to work on their performance ahead of qualifying.
Lead driver Adrian Sutil was happy with the testing of new components on his Force India but is slightly concerned about how well the car worked with the new tyre compounds.
He said; “it was not a bad day. We had quite a few new components on the car to test and the rear wing made a good difference.”
“In the second session we put it all together with a few more sets of tyres, but we had a small issue with the floor and lost a little bit of running.”
“It takes a good three to four laps to get the tyres working for us, on a hard tyre maybe longer, and at the beginning we suffered from understeer and front locking.”
“It is important to look at the other drivers’ lap times now to see what they achieved with the different tyre compounds.”
“I am aiming to qualify mid-table tomorrow – I think that is possible, so let’s see what we can do.”
Brit Paul Di Resta made his F1 debut in second practice taking over from test driver Nico Hulkenberg and was pleased to get underway but knows there is a tough job to do.
He added; “it was a good to have the opportunity to start my season today. Overall I felt quite comfortable with the new systems on the car, but until I get into a competitive situation it is still too early to say how we’ll do.”
“We have another practice session in the morning, and so we’ll look at the data from today and work on the small issues we had and our programme for qualifying.”
“I am excited about tomorrow, but at the same time there is a job to be done and my focus is to achieve the best result I can for the team.”
