Sahara Force India completed a busy free practice at COTA

Adrian Sutil (FP1: 1:39.699, P14, 15 laps / FP2: 1:38.719, P11, 31 laps): Adrian: “It’s my first visit to Austin and I have to say I really like the track.

Adrian Sutil, Sahara Force India F1 Team

Photo by: XPB Images

We worked hard to improve the car set-up today, but the balance is still not where I want it to be. Hopefully we can make some positive changes overnight.

As for the tyres, there is not a big difference between the hard and the medium, but we managed long runs on each compound so should be well prepared for the weekend.”

Paul Di Resta (FP1: 1:39.836, P15, 15 laps / FP2: 1:39.410, P15, 34 laps): “It’s been a difficult day to understand exactly where we are and I don’t think my position in FP2 is a true reflection of our competitiveness. I came across some traffic on my best lap so Adrian’s position is probably more representative.

The long runs looked more promising and if we get everything together we can hopefully match the performance level we’ve shown for the last few races. The focus tonight will be on tyres: understanding them more and how to manage them over the weekend.”

Dr Vijay Mallya, Team Principal & Managing Director: “It’s great to be back in Austin. The circuit still looks spectacular and the welcome from the American fans is always fantastic. Despite the disrupted morning session we made good progress today and both cars covered plenty of laps. It was a new experience for Adrian, who is driving here for the first time, but by the end of the morning session he was fully up-to-speed. Both drivers have yet to find the optimum balance and the track conditions meant it was hard to be consistent and difficult to make comparisons. The engineers have lots of data to analyse tonight to make sure we get the most from the tyres in qualifying and the race.”

Sahara Force India