Barcelona: Force India drivers missed out on Q3 yet again as Paul di Resta and Adrian Sutil settled for 16th and 17th positions respectively on the gird for Sunday's Spanish Grand Prix.
The drivers struggled to adjust with the new aerodynamics updates in their cars and thus went with the old set up but scoring points is looking difficult for Force India. In the last two races also they had returned without points.
Both di Resta and Sutil failed to improve their timing in Q2 after managing 1:24.332 and 1:24.648 in the Q1.
In Q2, di Resta clocked 1:26.126 which was only good enough for 16th position on the grid and following him was Sutil with the fastest lap time of 1:26.571.
It was one-two for Red Bull yet again but this time the pole position was secured by Mark Webber (1:20.981) and was followed by defending champion Sebastian Vettel (1:21.181).
McLarens' Lewis Hamilton was third after clocking a fastest lap of 1:21.961.
India's Narain Karthikeyan, who races for Hispania, will start 22nd on the grid as he managed a fastest lap of 1:27.908 in Q1.
Despite not so impressive qualifying session, Paul di Resta was hopeful for a better result and also defended team's strategy to go for less number of laps.
Both Resta and Sutil restricted themselves to five laps in Q2.
"I don't think our position on the grid is that representative of our true pace this weekend. We took the decision very early on that saving tyres for the race would free up our strategy a bit. That means I've got two sets of new options and a set of new primes to use on Sunday.
"How we use the tyres is also important because there's a big difference between the two compounds in terms of pace.
Also, the prime being used here is much harder than usual and so it lasts a bit longer," Rests said.
Sutil said race result would depend more on strategy than the position in qualifying.
"We switched back to our traditional aero package this morning because we didn't really have enough time to understand all the new parts that we brought here.
"We also know that qualifying is not as important as it used to be and that race strategy now plays a bigger factor in your race result. That's why we only ran the prime tyres during Q2 so that we could keep some new option tyres for the race. We feel this is the best approach for Sunday and hopefully it will pay us back," the German racer said.
Robert Fernley, deputy Team Principal, said it was a conscious decision of the team to not go full steam in Q2.
"We took the decision today to sacrifice grid position to be better prepared for the race. It means losing a few places on the grid but gives Paul and Adrian three sets of new tyres for the race. From P16 and P17 it will be tough to score points, but the races so far this season have demonstrated that there is plenty of room to make the strategy work to our advantage," he said.
Comments
0 comment