19/04/2013
NEWS STORY
A busy day in Bahrain saw both Sahara Force Indias inside the top ten during today's free practice sessions ahead of Sunday's Bahrain Grand Prix.
Paul Di Resta: "As Fridays go it's been positive and we've achieved as much as we could realistically have hoped for. The car is working well and responding as we expected, and we've already got a reasonable idea of where we stand. There is still some optimising to do, as always, but if we can take another step forward tonight we should be in a strong position going into qualifying."
Adrian Sutil: "Lots of laps and lots of things to evaluate today, but I'm still not totally comfortable with the car - either for short or long runs. It all feels very low grip at the moment so the set-up is not quite right for me yet. As for the tyres, there are no real concerns. My long runs looked competitive and both the medium and hard compounds seem to be working well for us in the high temperatures - as they did in Malaysia."
Jakob Andreasen, Chief Race Engineer: "A very straightforward couple of sessions and overall we are feeling happy with how things have gone. The aero programme this morning helped to address some of the unanswered questions from China and allowed us to learn more about some of the new parts we have tried on the car recently. We also tested all our cooling solutions and don't anticipate any issues during the race. As usual, we switched to tyre evaluation this afternoon and both cars managed to complete long runs on both tyre compounds. It was a slick session and sets us up nicely for tomorrow. With a few more tweaks overnight we should be able to keep up the momentum and get both cars in Q3 tomorrow afternoon."
A very straightforward couple of sessions and overall we are feeling happy with how things have gone. A few more tweaks overnight we should be able to keep up the momentum and get both cars in Q3 tomorrow afternoon.
Check out our Friday gallery, here.