22/06/2012
NEWS STORY
Sahara Force India enjoyed productive free practice sessions in Valencia as Nico Hulkenberg ended the day with the second fastest time, while Paul Di Resta was sixth overall.
Paul Di Resta: "When I got in the car this morning the baseline set-up was a good starting point and I didn't really change that much for the rest of the day. Our single lap speed looks strong, as does the long run pace, and we appear to have a good feel for the tyres already. Given the pace we have shown today we seem competitive so hopefully we can challenge for the top ten in qualifying tomorrow."
Nico Hulkenberg: "Just the one session for me today, but it went very well and we were able to pack a lot of work into the afternoon. I feel quite comfortable with the car and we managed some good runs on both tyres compounds today. I think the key factor for the rest of the weekend will be managing the tyres if the temperatures increase as expected and making sure we can deliver the same level of performance."
Jules Bianchi: "My morning session went well and the team learned a lot from the aero evaluation we did with the front wings. My first few laps were not at the limit, but I improved my speed step-by-step with each run and got more confidence with the conditions. The track was not so clean to begin with and although it improved during the session my tyres were going away at the same time. It was the second time I have used the medium compound tyres and I felt quite happy with their performance during the session."
Jakob Andreasen, Chief Engineer: "A solid day of practice in Valencia and we managed to get through our programme of test items, which included some aero parts and items we had evaluated in the simulator. The results were encouraging and show the correlation between our simulations and reality is working well. In terms of tyres we gathered a lot of data today and both the soft and medium compounds are performing well for us. The drivers were excellent, too, and their feedback has given us a good basis for tomorrow. There are some tough decisions to make tonight because we expect the temperatures to rise for the weekend, but we are up and running and well prepared heading into final practice tomorrow morning."
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