Monaco GP - Forceindia driver quotes

Paul di Resta (7th)
“A great result today and I’m very happy to make up so much ground on my starting position. We went aggressive with the strategy and I have to say the team really optimised it. The secret was managing the tyres and trying to find clean air when we could. The car felt really good, much stronger than yesterday, and that allowed me to push when we needed to. Fortunately the rain held off at the end because that could have had a big impact on the end of the race. It’s great that we managed to get both cars in the points and we can celebrate tonight.”

Nico Hulkenberg (8th)
“It was a pretty messy start with lots of cars touching and I was lucky to make it through because I had to avoid Grosjean, who was in the middle of the track. For the first few laps I was running with Michael and we were stuck behind Kimi who was struggling on the supersofts, but it was difficult to get by. Unfortunately Kimi stopped on the same lap as me so I remained behind him and we came out in a lot of traffic, which is when Paul jumped ahead of me. The rest of the race was quite uneventful and I just focused on looking after the tyres. It’s a great result for the team and we should be happy with the result.”

Dr Vijay Mallya, Force India team principal and managing director
“A very enjoyable Monaco Grand Prix and I am delighted to see both Sahara Force Indias well inside the points. Paul drove a very strong race, making up seven places on his grid position and managing the tyres perfectly. Nico was running the reverse strategy to Paul, which also worked out well, and means we leave here with ten important points. Now we look forward to the next race in Canada where we hope to continue our run of points finishes.”

Qualifying - Force India driver quotes

Force India
Nico Hulkenberg (11th, Q2 - 1m 15.421s)
“I had a pretty good run in both Q1 and Q2 – managing to avoid the traffic and my quick lap in Q2 was pretty neat so I don’t think I could have found more time. In fact, I almost set identical laptimes in Q1 and Q2. So I’m pretty happy with where I’m starting and hopefully we can come away with some points tomorrow. It’s always a fun race, a special place to be and we will be pushing hard to maximise the strategy and get a strong result.”

Paul di Resta (15th, Q2 - 1m 15.718s)
“I felt pretty happy with the balance of the car during FP2 on Thursday, but unfortunately it didn’t carry over for qualifying. We haven’t changed much on the car, but I was struggling with the rear and with traction. So I’m not as far up the grid as I would like to be and it leaves us with a hard task tomorrow, especially because it’s so difficult to overtake here. But we also know that Monaco can be an unpredictable race and I hope the strategy can help us fight back tomorrow.”

Dr Vijay Mallya, Force India team principal and managing director
“It’s well known that the qualifying hour in Monaco is the most important of the season, so we worked hard to make sure we had optimised the set-up for qualifying. Nico did an excellent job and only missed out on making Q3 by a tenth of a second. In fact, he was only half a second off the quickest time in Q2, which shows once again how closely-matched all the teams are. Paul didn’t feel totally comfortable with his car, but I’m confident he can bounce back and have a strong race starting from P14. I always enjoy the Monaco Grand Prix and we’ve seen in the past that anything can happen here, so we will be targeting points finishes with both cars.”

Thursday practice - Forceindia driver quotes

Paul di Resta, P1 - 1:18.302, 16th; P2 - 1:17.395, 12th 
“The morning session was quite straightforward and the baseline set-up was not too far away. The track was quite green to begin with, but it was starting to rubber in nicely during the final half hour. We worked a bit on the set-up, changing the aero balance and collected the data we needed on the soft tyres. The rain arrived quite early in the afternoon and, although we got out on the super-soft tyres, I didn’t get a completely dry run on them. It’s good to have done some miles on the intermediate tyres because, as we saw today, it’s quite hard to predict what the weather will do on Saturday and Sunday.”

Nico Hulkenberg, P1 - 1:17.631, 12th; P2 - 1:17.800, 14th
“The first session in Monaco is always a time to acclimatise and get used to the circuit again, especially because I didn’t race here last year. The morning session was busy on track, but we got through our programme and I did several runs on the soft tyres. The afternoon was affected by the weather and that made it difficult to get in the rhythm or complete our tyre programme. We didn’t think it would rain today, but the conditions can change so quickly here and we need to be ready for that over the weekend.”

Jakob Andreasen, Force India chief engineer
“A day of varied weather in Monaco kept us on our toes and forced us to adapt our plans for the afternoon session. Having run extensively on the soft tyres this morning, we switched early to the supersofts for the afternoon session, but with rain in the air we only managed limited running. The rain was not that heavy, but it was persistent and made for a very damp track, so we opted to do some running on the intermediates with both Paul and Nico. This should leave us well prepared in case we get some damp weather over the weekend. Set-up wise we made some good improvements this morning and the drivers’ feedback is positive. With a free day tomorrow we have plenty of time to analyse the data and make more improvements before final practice on Saturday morning.”


Source : F1.com

Monaco preview quotes - Force India

Paul di Resta, Force India
2011 Qualifying - 13th, 2011 Race - 12th
“The Monaco Grand Prix is probably the highlight of the year and the race that every driver wants to win. It’s always a really busy weekend: the grandstands are packed, the yachts are in the harbour and everybody is looking for the best view. When the weather is nice it really helps make for an electric atmosphere. It’s where I live now and it’s interesting to see how much busier Monaco gets when the race comes to town. It’s really nice to go home each night, sleep in your own bed and enjoy your own space. Also, I will have a lot of family and friends around me who come down to watch the race.

“It’s a circuit that’s all about confidence and commitment, and you need to build up your speed through the weekend to extract the maximum lap time. There are some great corners, such as Casino Square where you arrive at 185 mph and brake as you turn into a blind corner. Then there’s the slowest corner of the year, the hairpin, taken in first gear using maximum steering lock. For the end of the lap through the swimming pool you really feel the downforce and you need a car that can ride the bumps and kerbs. It’s a real challenge for drivers and engineers to get the perfect car.”

Nico Hulkenberg, Force India
2011 Qualifying - n/a, 2011 Race - n/a
“I enjoy the challenge of Monaco. There’s no part of the lap where you can relax for a second – even the main straight is not really a straight. I do like street racing in general because you need to grow with the car over the sessions to find the limits. If you get it right you’re only a few centimetres from the barrier so there’s no margin for error.

“I think we have taken a good step forward with the developments we made for Spain and they will continue to help us in Monaco. We still have work to do to understand and fine-tune them along with the set-up, so that is something the team is working on. When you see how close the teams around us are it can really make a difference to find even the smallest gain.”

Dr Vijay Mallya, Force India team principal
“The Monaco Grand Prix has always been a personal favourite of mine. It’s a wonderful venue to experience Formula One and nowhere else comes close to capturing the atmosphere and glamour that surrounds the race. I would love to see us performing well this weekend and challenging for points once again. We’ve certainly made progress with the car lately, but the whole grid remains very closely matched. Just a couple of tenths can separate ten positions on the grid so nobody can afford to take anything for granted. We also know that Monaco can be an unpredictable race so anything is possible. Our focus will be on making sure we qualify well to get track position for Sunday.”


Source: Formula1.com

Daly to complete Force India aero test

GP3 driver Conor Daly is to carry out a straight-line aero test for Force India on Thursday.

Daly is the son of former Tyrrell and Williams driver Derek Daly, and is driving for Lotus GP in GP3 this season. He won the sprint race in Barcelona last weekend to currently sit second in the championship standings, but will switch to a Formula One car for the first time this week to complete the test at Cotswold Airport in Gloucestershire.

In preparation, Daly visited the Force India headquarters on Tuesday to carry out a seat fitting and familiarise himself with the functions on the steering wheel. He also carried out some work with his engineering team while running through various procedures.

The team confirmed on its official website that the test would be to confirm results gained in the wind tunnel: "The focus is to measure aerodynamic forces to correlate with wind tunnel data."

Source: En.espnf1.com

More to come from Force India

Force India deputy team principal Bob Fernley says that the team still needs to optimise its upgrade package before the full potential of the VJM05 is shown.

Nico Hulkenberg finished tenth in the Spanish Grand Prix while Paul di Resta was 14th, and with both Williams and Sauber scoring solid points Force India finds itself a fairly distant eighth place in the constructors' championship. Despite the solitary point, Fernley still believes that the upgrade worked for the team and would have put it comfortably in the top ten if it had found the final bits of potential performance.

"From our point of view our upgrade has gone in successfully," Fernley told the official Force India website. "I think we've still got a little bit more engineering to be able to optimise it. Two to three tenths of optimisation would have put us fifth, and don't forget it was the first time we've run it…."

Despite the surprise Williams victory in Barcelona, Fernley still believes that Force India will score points more consistently throughout the season.

"We've seen a situation with Sauber in Malaysia where they came second and perhaps had the possibility of a victory. Williams were quite strong in Australia. Both have tailed off a bit and then Williams came back exceptionally strongly in Barcelona. Is it peaks and troughs, or is it consistency? At the moment I'm not discouraged because I think Sahara Force India and Lotus are probably the two most consistent teams. We're not at the front, but we're there and thereabouts all the time. I think we'd be more disconcerted if Williams continued to deliver. They have a jolly good car and we've always said the competition is incredible, and we've just got to dig deep and move forward."

Fernley also took Pastor Maldonado's win as encouragement that Force India is close to scoring some impressive results itself.

"Two to three tenths in qualifying is the difference between fifth and 13th. That's how tight it is. I think we've got to be pleased with what we achieved, it's not enough, but it's certainly closed the gap. As we've always said, the quality of the field is amazing around us, and it's not going to be easy for anybody.

Source: en.espnf1.com

2012 Spanish Grand Prix: Forceindia Race Report

Sahara Force India scored a point in Spanish Grand Prix as Nico Hülkenberg came home in tenth place. Teammate Paul Di Resta finished in P14.

P10      Nico Hülkenberg (VJM05/03)Tyre strategy: Used soft, new soft, new hard, new hard 

Nico: “A lot of hard work went into today’s race so it’s nice to get the reward of one point. It was a very tough race physically and there was never a moment to relax because I had Mark [Webber] filling my mirrors for the second half of the race. It was a great battle, with a lot of pressure, but fortunately I was able to keep him behind, which was not easy with the DRS on the main straight. Considering where I started it’s good to score a point and I don’t think we could have got much more from the race. The team did an excellent job with the pit stops and the strategy, and I’m pleased with what we achieved today.” 

P14      Paul Di Resta (VJM05/02)Tyre strategy: Used soft, new soft, new hard, new hard

 Paul: “I’m disappointed not to have been further up in the battle for points because my race was looking promising to begin with. But as things unfolded I lost track position so I think we need to analyse why our performance on the hard tyres did not meet our expectations and exactly why we lost out. My main battle in the second half of the race was with the Toro Rossos, but they were on the soft tyres when I was on the hards and it was impossible to keep them behind me. I think it’s just one of those races that didn’t work out for me for whatever reason so we’ll take it on the chin and look to come back stronger in Monaco.”

Robert Fernley, Deputy Team Principal“Another very tough and competitive Grand Prix, so we are pleased to have picked up a point with Nico. It was a hard-earned point with an optimised strategy and brilliant driving, especially Nico’s efforts to fend off Mark Webber in the final stages of the race. Paul was not far behind, but it was hard to keep him ahead of the Toro Rossos because our race pace was pretty similar and so we had to settle for P14. Looking back on the weekend as a whole we’ve seen once again that the entire field remains incredibly competitive and that we need to keep pushing hard to optimise the developments we have made to the car. We know there is more speed to come and we hope to demonstrate that in the next few races.”

Source: Forceindiaf1.com

Qualifying - ForceIndia driver quotes

Paul di Resta (13th, Q2 - 1m 23.125s)
“It has been quite a difficult weekend so far trying to get the car dialled into the circuit. In fact, it was only during the my final qualifying run that we made a change to the aero balance and I felt that the car was really hooked up. It’s close throughout the field once again, but we’ve been fairly aggressive on set-up and our pace over longs runs has looked quite competitive so far this weekend, which gives us a reason to be optimistic for the race. The goal will be to make up ground tomorrow and I think it will be a big achievement if we can pick up some points.”

Nico Hulkenberg (14th, Q2 - 1m 23.177s)
“I’m pretty satisfied with my final lap in Q2 because I don’t think we could have achieved much more from the session today. That’s just where we are at the moment in terms of qualifying pace. We are still getting to understand the upgrades we have on the car, but it’s also clear that everyone else has made a step forward here and so the midfield remains extremely tight. The races so far this year have shown that grid position is not as crucial as it used to be with a lot of movement in the races, so I think we can still have a good race.”

Robert Fernley, Force India deputy team principal
“The team has done an excellent job over the last few weeks to push through our upgrade package and get it on the car this weekend. But it’s still early days and I’m sure that over the coming races we can fine-tune things further and extract even more performance. With than in mind I think we can take encouragement from our qualifying showing today with both Nico and Paul just a couple of tenths shy of squeezing through to Q3. We’ve been pleased with our tyre wear and the performance over long runs suggests we are in good shape for a competitive race tomorrow.”


Source: Formula1.com

Friday practice - Force India driver quotes

Force India
Nico Hulkenberg, P1 - 1:25.339, 10th; P2 - 1:24.365, 10th
“We got through the programme pretty much as planned and the initial results seem quite encouraging. The main task was to continue understanding the new upgrades, which I ran for both sessions, and getting the car set-up nicely for the track. We made some changes during the lunch break and they improved things, so I’m happy about what we’ve done today. As always, there’s still work to do, but the main tasks for today are complete.”

Paul di Resta, P2 - 1:24.688, 15th
“A fairly normal Friday afternoon session for me trying to get on top of the tyres quickly and fine-tune the balance of the car. I had the new parts on the car, which seem to be delivering, although it’s too early to say where we stand because we don’t know what everyone else was doing or their fuel loads. I think it’s going to be another very close weekend, just as we have seen in the previous races, and we still have plenty of work to do before qualifying to find the sweet spot.”

Jules Bianchi, P1 - 1:26.630, 18th
“I was driving the same car we raced in Bahrain so that the team could run a back-to-back comparison with the new developments we have here. The session went well, I managed 21 laps on the hard compound tyre and the programme has given us a lot of data to analyse before qualifying.”

Jakob Andreasen, Force India chief engineer
“A productive Friday for us with excellent feedback from Nico, Paul and Jules as we continued to evaluate the developments we ran in Mugello last week. The driver comments are encouraging and the numbers also suggest the new parts are delivering what we expected. The rest of the programme was a fairly standard Friday job list, although Nico did use two sets of hard tyres this morning. Paul was back in the car for the afternoon and quickly got up to speed as he spent the majority of the session on the soft tyres. There’s still room to improve overnight to maximise final practice and leave us in good shape going into qualifying.”

Spain preview quotes - Force India

Paul di Resta, Force India
2011 Qualifying - 16th, 2011 Race - 12th
“[After the Mugello test] There’s still plenty of work to do in free practice to get on top of the car, but we’ve already done the basic checks. I probably know Barcelona better than any other track on the calendar. We did two tests there in the winter and I had four days in the car so I already feel quite well prepared, but it’s the same for everyone. I expect the field to be incredibly close once again.”

Nico Hulkenberg, Force India
2011 Qualifying - n/a, 2011 Race - n/a
“It’s a track I enjoy and where I’ve been successful in the past. It’s high-speed, there are lots of right hand corners and it’s quite tough physically, especially on your neck. As a city I enjoy being in Barcelona because it’s a great place with a nice atmosphere. Also, the stands are always full on race day because the Spanish fans love Formula One.

“The first sector through turns one, two and three is tricky and you need to treat them as one corner. A mistake in one or two will hurt you through three and cost your lap time. It feels great when you get them just right. Also, the final sector is quite technical: it’s slow and twisty, especially the last chicane and it’s easy to drop time at the end of the lap.”

Dr Vijay Mallya, Force India team principal
“Now that the European season is upon us, we should be able to bring through more updates to the car. That will start this weekend when we run with some of the new parts we evaluated in Mugello last week. However, we have to remember that most teams will make a development step for Barcelona so it remains to be seen how this will impact on our relative performance.

“As well as developments for the car we are pushing hard to maximise the strategies and the drivers are delivering excellent performances in the races. That’s so important this year with the margins between the teams so tight. If we can continue to deliver like we did in Bahrain then we should be able to remain in the hunt for points this weekend.”


Source: Formula1.com

Hulkenberg confident more points will come

Nico Hulkenberg is hoping to add to his points tally at this weekend's Spanish Grand Prix after a slow start to the season.

Hulkenberg is back in Formula One this season after a year as a test driver and scored the first two points of his return at the second round of the season in Malaysia. However, his Force India team is in the middle of the intensely competitive midfield this year and he has failed to score at the other three races while team-mate Paul di Resta has amassed 15 points.

But Hulkenberg is not worried: "I feel very comfortable in the team and I'm enjoying the season. A few of the races haven't worked out for me, but I'm looking forward not backwards and determined to get some great results for the team. I'm working well with my car crew, we are pushing hard and we will try our best to get back in the points this weekend."

Force India team principal Vijay Mallya said his team is starting to ramp up its development programme, which he is hoping will result in more points from both drivers.

"Now that the European season is upon us, we should be able to bring through more updates to the car," Mallya said. "That will start this weekend when we run with some of the new parts we evaluated in Mugello last week. However, we have to remember that most teams will make a development step for Barcelona so it remains to be seen how this will impact on our relative performance.

"As well as developments for the car we are pushing hard to maximise the strategies and the drivers are delivering excellent performances in the races. That's so important this year with the margins between the teams so tight. If we can continue to deliver like we did in Bahrain then we should be able to remain in the hunt for points this weekend."

Source: En.espnf1.com

Di Resta also braced for close battle

Like British compatriot Lewis Hamilton, Paul di Resta is prepared for a closely-fought Spanish Grand Prix as the Formula 1 community reunites in Europe this weekend. In his first Barcelona race with Force India last year, the Scot qualified 16th and finished in 12th position.

Di Resta travels to Barcelona following last week’s test session at Mugello, when his programme was affected by both poor weather and some technical problems.

“We didn’t do a massive number of laps but it was a chance to start evaluating some of our car developments,” he explains. “There’s still plenty of work to do in free practice to get on top of the car, but we’ve already done the basic checks.

“I probably know Barcelona better than any other track on the calendar. We did two tests there in the winter and I had four days in the car, so I already feel quite well prepared but it’s the same for everyone. I expect the field to be incredibly close once again.”

Last time out in Bahrain, di Resta finished in a highly respectable sixth place despite missing the second practice session. At present he is inside the top ten of the Drivers’ Championship.

Source: Gpupdate.net

Reliability issues hamper Force India at Mugello

Force India blamed a number of reliability issues for a second day of limited running at the Mugello test.

Wet weather restricted test driver Jules Bianchi to 19 laps on Tuesday before suspected problems with the car's hydraulics limited Paul di Resta to just 14 laps in the dry on Wednesday. Di Resta finally set a lap time with four minutes of the afternoon session remaining, giving the team some crucial data to analyse its latest updates, which include a new McLaren-style exhaust system.

"We had a few issues today which kept us in the garage and meant that we couldn't get through much of our programme," di Resta said. "The guys spent a lot of time changing things on the car just before lunch and I only managed to get back out for a final run at the end of the day. You always want more laps, but these things can happen and hopefully we can have a full day of running tomorrow to get through our programme and learn what we need to learn."

Chief engineer Jakob Andreasen explained that the team changed the hydraulics as a precaution as well as the engine during the day.

"It's never nice to spend so much time sitting in the garage, but we had a few reliability concerns that we needed to resolve before we continued running," he said. "We suspected the issue was related to the hydraulic system of the car so changed that as a precaution. At the same time we chose to make the most of the downtime by bringing forward the engine change, which had been planned for the end of the session. It has been a tough day for the guys in the garage, but they did a great job to get the car out for the final half hour and give Paul the chance to complete a handful of laps in preparation for tomorrow.

Di Resta will share the final day with team-mate Nico Hulkenberg to make up for the lack of running.

"Due to the lack of running for Paul, he will now stay on for half a day tomorrow, before Nico takes over in the afternoon," Andreasen added.

Source: en.espnf1.com

BIANCHI: IT WAS DIFFICULT TO TEST ALL THE DEVELOPMENTS

Sahara Force India kicked off its Mugello test today as Jules Bianchi got behind the wheel of the VJM05 to complete limited running in the wet conditions.

Jules Bianchi
“This morning we had to wait a long time for the track to dry. We did some runs on the intermediates just to check the car’s systems and when the conditions improved I went back out on the dry tyres [medium] to get confident with the car and to feel the track conditions. There was a chance to do some aero checks and we got some good aero data, but it was difficult to test all the developments so that will need to be done later this week.”

Jakob Andreasen, Chief Engineer
“We expected the wet weather conditions today so we tried our best to work around them and made sure Jules was out on track when the track was at its driest. After some installation laps on the intermediates, he switched to the medium compound just before lunch and did a couple of runs to get a dry baseline and measured some of the aerodynamic pressures on the car. With the rain intensifying in the afternoon we opted to run a very limited programme and prepared the car for tomorrow. Jules got out towards the end of the session to do a final systems check, which leaves us well placed to maximise tomorrow when we expect much drier conditions.”

Source: F1pulse.com