With Sahara Force India not getting a B-Spec car until Austria, the team continues on the back foot going into the Chinese Grand Prix. With neither car recording a lap time under the 1 minute 40 second mark. Each driver finished 16th and 18th in the 2 session with Sergio Perez leading for the first one and Nico Hulkenberg for the second.
Despite the poor results Hulkenberg thought the sessions had been good for Force India, saying; “It was a straightforward Friday in which we were able to get through our programme as planned. The majority of our work was on the tyres and on car balance, which should offer us a base to work from for the rest of the weekend.”
However; he did admit the team was not in a favourable position; “We obviously have some work to do in order to extract some more performance from the car, especially as we switch between the different tyre compounds, but that should be the main focus for us tonight.”
Team mate Perez openly criticised the team during the week for not performing at a high enough standard and not getting the B-Spec car until after the rest of the field. He continued to have issues, complaining that; “Today was not the easiest of days for me, especially the afternoon session, but at least the conditions out on track were quite consistent.”
When talking about the second session, he said; “We had to abort my first run on the option tyres and, when we went to resume it, there was a lot of traffic, which made it difficult to learn about our single-lap performance. It is something we will need to focus on tomorrow morning ahead of qualifying.”
This suggests that free practice 3 will be essential for Perez not just to prepare for qualifying but also to learn about the option tyre for the race. Despite this, he went on to say; “On the other hand, we were able to fit in a longer run on the prime tyres, which gives us useful information for Sunday.”
