24/09/2010
NEWS STORY
A day of mixed fortunes for the Force India F1 Team on the opening day of practice for the Singapore Grand Prix, F1's only night race. A wet-to-dry opening 90 minute session saw both Tonio Liuzzi and Adrian Sutil running consistently in the top ten and ultimately finish inside the top seven, however the afternoon practice proved a little more challenging. Tonio put in a promising performance and completed the usual tyre preparation and set-up work, concentrating on longer runs. Adrian's running was however curtailed prematurely when he ran across a high kerb through the chicane at turn 10 and damaged the suspension, missing out on his final run on the soft tyres.
Adrian Sutil: The morning session was very good and in both the wet and the dry conditions I felt able to push the car and set good times. In the afternoon it was also feeling very comfortable, but unfortunately I made a small mistake in the chicane and went over the kerb. The car took off and when it came back down it broke some of the front suspension and I had to stop. It's disappointing as I couldn't do my soft tyre run at the end. Based on the work we did do though the car feels much better here than last year and I think we can achieve a lot this weekend.
Tonio Liuzzi: Today went OK and we got a lot of work done in the afternoon in particular. We didn't do much running in the first session as we waited until the track dried a bit, but in the later practice we completed our usual tyre preparation and set-up work, which is crucial here due to the special nature of the track. It's going to be difficult to choose the tyres tomorrow as the soft work well but tail off and then the car balance is affected, but the hard seem to work fine. We have to work a little on the set-up but on the longer runs it felt OK and even on the heavier fuel loads we seem competitive.
Dominic Harlow, chief race engineer: During FP1 the circuit took quite a long time to dry, meaning our programme included a run on intermediate tyres followed by a second on dry tyres. The track was in quite good condition otherwise and in FP2 it was good for dry tyres for our usual comparisons. Tonio worked on set-up, suffering from a bit of understeer, and unfortunately Adrian clipped a kerb at T10 on his second outing and couldn't continue. With some improvements to the car overnight we believe we can be competitive tomorrow and to get both cars into Q3 remains a realistic target.
To check out our Singapore practice gallery, click here