03/10/2014
NEWS STORY
Sahara Force India's preparations for Sunday's Japanese Grand Prix got underway today at Suzuka.
Nico Hulkenberg: "Today's practice sessions went quite well from our perspective, even though in FP2 there were a lot of yellow and red flags that brought a few interruptions. We have a clear idea of what we need to concentrate on to find a bit more speed overnight and hopefully some changes in the set-up will improve the balance of the car ahead of tomorrow's qualifying session. I am not overly worried about the rain that is expected later in the weekend; we just have to wait and see, especially for Sunday. In the end, we are all in the same boat when it comes to the weather and we will need to react to what the situation is."
Sergio Perez: "It was quite a difficult day because we lost a lot of track time this afternoon. It meant we could only do a short run on each tyre compound and I missed out on the high fuel running. Of course, if it rains on Sunday, missing out on this running won't really matter, but we have to see what happens with the weather. My initial feeling was good on the hard tyre but we still need to work out the right compromise to get the most from the medium tyre."
Robert Fernley, Deputy Team Principal: "It was quite a straightforward morning session with both cars running through their initial programmes and making reasonable progress. Unfortunately the afternoon was a bit more complicated with Checo's car suffering from an electronics control problem related to the gearbox. That impacted quite significantly on his track time and meant we could not do the usual high-fuel running that we had planned. Nico, on the other hand, was able to do some longer runs to give us some useful data, although his progress was disrupted by the red flags, especially the final one at the close of the session. The rest of the day was focussed on evaluating set-up changes to find the best direction for tomorrow, while also keeping in mind the uncertain forecast for Sunday. The overall focus for tonight is to try and make the drivers feel a bit more comfortable with the balance."
Check out our Friday gallery, here.