Formula One news

'Typical first day' for Force India

The French Grand Prix weekend got under way on Friday with two 90-minute free practice sessions. Force India F1 driver Adrian Sutil didn't have the best start of the weekend as he ran into a couple of technical problems. His team mate Giancarlo Fisichella complained about a lack of grip.

Speaking about the team's first day at Magny-Cours Force India's chief technical officer Mike Gascoyne said: "A pretty typical first day doing our normal programme of set up work and tyre evaluation. Adrian struggled a bit with the car under braking all day and we will need to work on this tomorrow. We nevertheless managed to complete our programme with no major issues. The tyre position looks fairly clear now and we have established a fair set-up, so overall a reasonable first day for us."

Adrian Sutil commented: "Overall it was such not a great day as we had a few small technical problems today. The main issue was with the brakes and then the tyres overheating. I was struggling under braking, and this morning I lost a lot of the session. In the afternoon the track was slower as the temperature increased and it was difficult to get the tyres to work well again, but now we have found the problem and can get it fixed for tomorrow."

Giancarlo Fisichella said: "We went through the scheduled programme today and made some steps forward, but we are still relatively far away from the others and have some work to do. The grip level was quite poor in both sessions and we had some understeer in the high speed corners. We also compared the tyres and the softer compound works OK, but it will still be a difficult weekend."

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