The Force India Formula One Team has completed a productive opening day of practice for this weekend's Malaysian Grand Prix held at the Sepang International Circuit close to the capital city Kuala Lumpur. For the second consecutive event, Giancarlo Fisichella secured a top 10 time, just under two seconds from the fastest lap recorded by Lewis Hamilton.

Giancarlo and team-mate Adrian Sutil worked through a programme of set-up, tyre testing and data accumulation on the new aero updates introduced for this weekend, putting in 98 laps of the 5.543km track between them.

Adrian had a more difficult day as he was only able to complete five laps in the morning session after his car developed an engine problem that caused him to stop out on track. He put in 35 laps in the later session, but struggled to find a good balance on the car after missing a large chunk of the morning practice.

After a final practice session tomorrow, qualifying will take place at 14:00hrs local time.

Adrian Sutil: 'This morning we had a problem with the engine and then the second session in the afternoon was not so good. Again we had problems with the new tyres - I don't know if it was the car or the pressures, but we just can't get a time out of the softer tyres. We have to look at this and improve for tomorrow as I am not happy with today.'

Giancarlo Fisichella: 'We made a big improvement from the morning to the afternoon session. This morning there was a lot of understeer and then oversteer - it was really inconsistent but we made a big step forward and the balance was a lot better in the second session. It was more consistent and comfortable. Unfortunately when I was doing my new tyre run Glock was going very slowly in the middle of the last corner so I lost three tenths. It wasn't acceptable, but thankfully it wasn't the qualifying session.'

Mike Gascoyne, chief technical officer: 'A useful day. A difficult first session with low grip and both cars having a lot of oversteer and an engine failure on Adrian's car, which limited his running. We were however able to analyse the reasons in the break and improve for the second session. The long runs looked very good and we were able to gather all the data we need. Once again we proved we have a competitive car in that midfield pack and we just have to get everything right for tomorrow to make sure we can now get the best out of qualifying.'

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