Formula One news

Fisichella shows promising pace for Force India

The Force India Formula 1 team began its first Formula 1 weekend today in Melbourne. Italian driver Giancarlo Fisichella showed the team made a lot of progress over the winter as Fisichella posted the 9th fastest time in Friday's second free practice session.

In Friday's free practice sessions both Fisichella and Sutil concentrated on longer runs and fine-tuning the race set-up. The Force India duo and completed 101 laps in total with the only mechanical problem a minor hydraulic leak for Adrian in the first session.

Giancarlo Fisichella commented about his day of testing: "It was a good challenge today and it looks quite promising. We made a big step forward over the winter and, with the new development parts we have here, we are not looking too bad. I am happy with the job we are doing so far, both the team and myself are working well together, and although we know we still have a lot of work to do and it is going to be tough, it's a good start."

His team-mate Adrian Sutil said: "I think today went quite well. The track was slippery at the beginning, so it was difficult to find a good balance to start with, but after the first run I was happy and then we didn't change so much over the sessions - really just fine-tuned everything. We had a small hydraulic problem before lunch but it was soon solved and we could do several longer runs in the second free practice with some quite good lap times. At the end it was a little bit unlucky I had some traffic on my fastest lap so I couldn't do a good time with the new tyres, but tomorrow is another day and I think we should be much better than last year."

Mike Gascoyne, Force India's chief technical officer, said: "A very good day concentrating on race set-up and tyre evaluation. The only mechanical problem we had was a minor hydraulic leak for Adrian in the morning, which curtailed his morning running, but it was no problem for the afternoon. Overall the tyres were dominated by front graining on the longer runs, but as the circuit improves I am sure that aspect will get better. On the whole though a very good day for the team that confirms the step forward we have made relative to the competition over the winter. We now have to carry that forward through qualifying and into the race."

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