31/10/2008
NEWS STORY
The Force India Formula One Team today started its preparations for the final race of the 2008 FIA Formula One World Championship, the Brazilian Grand Prix. Giancarlo Fisichella and Adrian Sutil completed two 90 minute practice sessions at the bumpy Interlagos track in Sao Paulo, working through the standard Friday programme of tyre and set-up evaluation.
Heavy rain before the morning session left the 4.309km track damp and cool and both drivers struggled to get heat into the harder tyre compound available this event. With temperatures remaining similar in the afternoon and showers lingering, the team adjusted the aero balance to compensate for the lack of grip. Giancarlo and Adrian duly improved their times by one second to set the 19th and 20th quickest times of the afternoon, just over a second from the fastest lap of the day.
Adrian Sutil: 'We didn't have any problems today so we could get through our schedule as planned. I was quite happy with my performance and we can see how the tyres are working now. The soft ones seem to be better compared to the medium tyre at the moment. We'll study the data and work on it for tomorrow.'
Giancarlo Fisichella: 'The whole day we struggled with the grip, when it was dry or wetter. We seem to have problems in particular with graining, even after a couple of laps. My speed on the straight is also relatively low, which means we aren't able to take advantage of the long straight. At the moment we don't know why or what the problem is but we have another practice tomorrow before qualifying so we'll try and get it better for that.'
Mike Gascoyne, chief technical officer: 'A normal first day with no real mechanical issues on either car. Both drivers were able to run through their programmes of set up and evaluating the tyres. On the longer runs we had a lot of graining on the tyres and understeer, but overall a productive day to set us up for the weekend.'