16/09/2017
NEWS STORY
Sahara Force India will start tomorrow's Singapore Grand Prix from P12 with Sergio Perez and from P14 with Esteban Ocon.
Sergio Perez: "It was a difficult qualifying session. All the way up to my final run in Q2 I was struggling with the front end of the car. We made some changes which helped the front, but I lost rear grip instead. I'm not really sure what went wrong so we need to look into the data to really understand why we didn't deliver tonight. It's going to be a long and tough race tomorrow, and we need to be patient. We are only a couple of positions away from the top ten so we will fight for as many points as possible."
Esteban Ocon: "It's been a disappointing day for the team - the first bad qualifying session in quite a long time, actually. It's not something we want to see, obviously, but sometimes that's the way it goes. I felt comfortable with the car until qualifying, but the track evolution went away from us. I struggled under braking and it was very easy for me to lock the fronts. We now need to focus on trying to recover in the race. Points are still very much possible, even starting in P14, so we will just go for it. There has been a 100% record of Safety Cars here over the years so there may be opportunities. Our car is better in the race than in qualifying and it's my birthday tomorrow so I really want to get a good result for me and the team."
Robert Fernley: "We certainly didn't deliver on our potential today and, as a result, we have missed out on the top ten. Sergio struggled with rear grip, while Esteban didn't manage to deliver a clean lap in Q2. It's a shame because grid position is very important on this circuit and we face a big task tomorrow to bring the cars back up into the points. However, like any street circuit, there are likely to be incidents and opportunities that we need to use to our advantage. The race pace is strong and both drivers are determined to make up for the disappointment of today's qualifying session."
Check out our Saturday gallery from Singapore, here.