Formula One news

Force India struggle with car balance

The Force India F1 drivers will once again have to start a Grand Prix from the last row. Both Adrian Sutil and Giancarlo Fisichella, who were confirmed for 2009 on Friday, complained about the balance of their car in qualifying.

Adrian Sutil commented: "The balance changed quite a lot in qualifying. Normally you would always find grip, but this time the level was lower and so under braking I had lots of oversteer and locking at the rear and the traction was very bad everywhere, which made it quite difficult to do a perfect lap. I did three laps and although they were all OK it makes you think maybe there was a little bit more in it as the car is difficult to drive round here. We do have a better race pace though so we should improve on our starting position."

Giancarlo Fisichella said: "I'm not so happy with today as we struggled again with the balance and on my last lap I couldn't improve. I had some really big oversteer through sector two and lost around four tenths and then again through turn eight I lost some more time so I couldn't go faster than my second lap. It's a shame we couldn't start higher, but we do know we can stay with the others under race conditions so we have to look to have a good strategy tomorrow."

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• 04 Jan.
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• 02 Jan.
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• 01 Jan.
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• 31 Dec. '08
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• 29 Dec. '08
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• 28 Dec. '08
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• 27 Dec. '08
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• 26 Dec. '08
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• 25 Dec. '08
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• 24 Dec. '08
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