Formula One news

Force India happy with practice

Force India was happy with its start to this weekend's Belgian Grand Prix, with Adrian Sutil recording a strong eighth quickest time in the afternoon practice at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit. Giancarlo Fisichella experienced a productive morning, however his progress was stalled in the final half of the afternoon session by a spin on a river of water running from a tyre barrier Kimi Raikkonen had crashed into on the previous lap. 

"In the end I could put together a good lap and now at least we have some idea about the balance in these type of conditions," said Sutil. "This morning was OK but we lost the final few minutes of the session with a broken damper and couldn't improve the time from the first run. At least we had some more tyres to use in the afternoon, but then unfortunately the rain started and it was difficult to judge when we could go out."

Giancarlo Fisichella commented, "It was a shame we could not do more laps in the drying conditions in the afternoon. Unfortunately I was coming out of turn eight and just came on to a really wet part of the track on dry tyres. The car just snapped away and there wasn't anything I could do to catch it before it went into the barriers. Until that point it had been a fairly normal day, we were finding a good balance and getting used to the tyres and I think we could have got a good time in the drier conditions at the end of the session."

Mike Gascoyne, chief technical officer added, "A mixed day today, for both the conditions and the drivers. Unfortunately Giancarlo's day was spoilt when he had a spin on the water that came out of the tyres following Raikkonen's accident. Other than that he had had a reasonable day, evaluating the tyres and working towards a set up for the weekend. Adrian was however able to complete most of his programme, although with the slippery conditions it was difficult to get a good balance. Overall though I think we have continued the momentum from Valencia and the VJM01 looks to be performing well. We hope to have a good weekend."

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