Qualifying - ForceIndia driver quotes

Adrian Sutil (8th, Q3 - 1m 21.445s)
“I’m very pleased with my qualifying and it feels great to be starting from eighth for the second race in a row. This morning in final practice things did not look so good because I was struggling with a general lack of grip. We changed quite a few things for qualifying - obviously the right things - and this afternoon the car felt really good and I found the lap times we felt were possible. In the past the Hungaroring has not been a track where we have been very strong because it’s a maximum downforce track, so it feels great to show once again that our car is competitive everywhere. The race tomorrow will be all about getting the strategy spot on, but we’re starting in a good place and I’m looking forward to it.”

Paul di Resta (11th, Q2 - 1m 22.256s)
“Starting in 11th place is not too bad, but I was hoping to be a little bit higher up. I’m still in a good position to score some points tomorrow and it’s nice to be starting from the cleaner side of the grid. We had a bit of a messy run in Q1 on the super-soft tyre, but other than that our prime run was very good and I was happy with the car. It’s just my final lap in Q2 wasn’t quite there so maybe I should have been a bit more adventurous. In practice we’ve shown that we can be competitive over longs runs and I’m optimistic that we can carry that through to the race.”

Dr Vijay Mallya, Force India chairman & team principal
“Once again we have come to a high downforce track and demonstrated that the VJM04 is a consistent top ten runner. This is now the fourth race in a row that a Force India has made it through to Q3 and the whole team can be proud of this achievement. Adrian was superb today and recovered well from a difficult final practice session to qualify eighth – splitting the Mercedes cars. Paul has also shown good speed throughout all the sessions and will be strong in the race. We go into tomorrow in a positive frame of mind and focussed on converting our performance today into more points.”

Source: f1.com

Paul Di Resta confident of strong qualifying in Hungary

Paul di Resta is confident that Force India can carry its strong practice form into qualifying after setting the ninth fastest time on Friday.

 

The Force India driver ended the day 1.8 seconds off pace-setter Lewis Hamilton's time, and was a tenth-and-a-half faster than team-mate Adrian Sutil. 

Despite the team traditionally being stronger on low-downforce circuits, di Resta believes that the team's radical new aerodynamic package, which it raced for the first time in Monaco, now means that it is competitive even on tracks like the Hungaroring.

Its pace represents a significant turnaround for the Force India, which has never scored a point in Hungary. The Silverstone-based team last did so in its Jordan guise nine years ago, when Giancarlo Fisichella finished sixth.

"I'm optimistic that we should be able to maintain that form this weekend," said di Resta when asked by AUTOSPORT about his hopes of staying in the top 10.

"The car has given us confidence everywhere we go. Last year, we started very strongly and dropped down, but this year we started averagely and the raft of improvements have been incredible."

The Scot is determined to have a clean weekend that isn't interrupted by the kind of bad luck that has cost him potential points finishes in the last four races, and believes that Friday practice represented a good start.

He is confident that there is more to come from the Force India, raising hopes that it might be able to challenge Mercedes, which was best-of-the-rest behind McLaren, Ferrari and Red Bull in free practice, in qualifying and the race.

"We got through all of our objectives today," said di Resta. "We did a normal Friday's running and got long runs on both compounds, which was important. We got some valuable data. There are certainly some places where we can improve."

Source:autosport.com