Force India Abu Dhabi GP Friday practice report

Free practice objectives:
FP1: Co-ordinated aero tests on both cars, wing level evaluation
FP2: Tyre data collection and continued race set-up

Adrian Sutil, Force India F1 Team

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Adrian Sutil

Adrian: “The track had very low grip to begin with, but we found quite a good baseline starting point with the car right away. The main focus was on improving the traction out of the low-speed corners because that’s what this circuit is all about. We also worked a lot on finding the optimum wing levels and seem to have found a good solution so far. As for the tyres, we did most of the work in the second session to simulate the conditions we will get on Sunday evening. Both tyres seem to be performing well with quite low degradation.”

Paul di Resta, Force India F1 Team

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Paul Di Resta

Paul: “I think looking at where we’ve ended up we should be pretty happy with today’s work. In the first session I was struggling with rear grip and it wasn’t easy to lean on the car. There was also quite a lot of front locking. But in the second session we started to get on top of those issues and got quite close to a decent set-up. I think we can still make some steps tomorrow and look to find more low-speed stability, but overall we’re not in bad shape.”

Dominic Harlow, Circuit Engineering Director

“We carried out some co-ordinated aero tests on both cars during FP1 and of course looked at wing level for the race. There was also some set-up work as usual. FP2 was more about the tyres and race set-up as the temperature and track conditions reflect more closely the twilight timing of this race. Also available to us, and useful for our programmes, were two sets of a development soft tyre from Pirelli which looked positive.”

Adrian Sutil (VJM04/04)
FP1: P7 1.41.340 23 laps
FP2: P8 1:40.951 34 laps

Paul Di Resta (VJM04/02)
FP1: P9 1:42.151 28 laps
FP2: P9 1:41.021 37 laps