Sahara Force India drivers clocking up over 100 laps on Friday at Nürburgring

Free practice for the German Grand Prix got underway at the Nurburgring today with Paul Di Resta and Adrian Sutil clocking up over 100 laps between them across the two sessions.

Adrian Sutil, Sahara Force India VJM06

Photo by: XPB Images

They are nice to drive and will be a very good qualifying tyre, but long runs were quite difficult. The medium tyre performs well and is very consistent, so there is a good combination for the race.”

Paul Di Resta (FP1: 1:33.493, P11, 18 laps / FP2: 1:31.797, P10, 40 laps): “Quite a tricky session with lots to think about overnight. There’s room to improve the set-up because I’m not feeling as comfortable as I usually do.

Tyre-wise we’ve done a lot of running across the two compounds to give us enough data to understand the impact of the new rear tyres. The two compounds are different extremes so we need to make sure we can get both in the right operating window.”

Jakob Andreasen, Chief Race Engineer: “A very busy day for both cars, but it was a relief to finally have a completely dry Friday. We evaluated some aero items this morning and will look over the results to make sure we deploy our best parts tomorrow.

The afternoon saw our usual tyre programme and it immediately became clear there was a big delta between the soft and medium tyres, which will make the strategy interesting for Sunday.

The car performance is about where we expected it to be, but we do need to find some more pace ahead of qualifying. We have a few more items to deploy tomorrow, which should help optimise the car further.

Overall I believe we are in good shape and I’m optimistic that we can be up there in the top ten with both cars tomorrow afternoon.”

Sahara Force India Formula One Team