Force India in the top ten with both cars
Force India completed a very satisfying qualifying session with its cars. Nico Hülkenberg claimed seventh place on home soil while his team mate Sergio Perez finished in eighth just a tiny margin behind.
Force India has been strong this weekend from the first laps on Friday. The Silverstone-based squad was the only team to do proper testing on the medium compounds which is the hardest tyre brought to Germany. It proved to be competitive on the other two compounds as well.
Nico Hülkenberg was content to be able to maximalize the performace of his car.
“I’m feeling pretty happy to qualify in seventh for my home race – it’s best of the rest behind the top three teams and a good effort by the whole team.”
The German stated his laps were constant and his final attempt was particularly strong.
“Our objective is always to maximise our potential and it feels like we achieved that today. Most of my laps in the session came together nicely and my final effort in Q3 was spot on.”
“We can expect a tough fight for good points tomorrow, but we are in a good starting position and we’ve looked strong here in all the sessions. The long run pace is competitive, too, so we’ve got every chance of getting a great result this weekend,” said the one-time pole sitter.
Sergio Perez enjoyed the intense fight with his team mate and the Williams drivers.
“It was a fun and very intense fight with Nico and the two Williams cars throughout qualifying, and in the end it was really close between the four of us.”
“It was crucial to get through Q1 on one set of tyres because some other teams had to use two sets and this gave us a small advantage in Q2, which helped us make the top ten.”
The Mexican thinks there was more to get out of the car, but he experienced some balance issues with the front wing. He suggested he may have picked up some debris on one side of the wing.
“On my last lap of Q3 I struggled a bit through some of the right-hand corners; I think I may have picked something up on my front wing – maybe some debris – and that cost me some time, but it’s something I will analyse with the team.”
Perez expects a tactically interesting race as the two favoured compounds – supersoft and softs – have showed very different behavior so far-
“Tomorrow is going to be interesting. We are starting on the supersofts on which we qualified and we will need to work well as a team to make the strategy work and score some important points,” he added.
