2013 Formula 1 Petronas Malaysia Grand Prix, Free Practice Report

Sahara Force India was back in action today as Adrian Sutil and Paul Di Resta completed their free practice programmes ahead of Sunday’s Malaysian Grand Prix.

Adrian Sutil      VJM06–03

FP1:     1:37.769            P6        17 laps
FP2:     1:37.788            P10      10 laps

Adrian: “The morning went OK and the balance was quite good. We made a change during the lunch hour to cure some oversteer and my general feeling with the car is good. I missed out on some running this afternoon, but I think the rain interrupted things for everybody so I didn’t miss too much dry track time. I still managed a run on the hard and the medium this afternoon so I’ve got a feel for both the tyre compounds.”

Paul Di Resta   VJM06–04

FP1:     1:37.773            P8        15 laps
FP2:     1:37.571            P8        30 laps

Paul: “I think we’ve had a reasonable day. We’ve got some tyre data and first impressions suggest that our performance level is pretty similar to where it was in Melbourne last week. Hopefully we can continue the progress overnight. Generally I’m fairly happy but, as always, there’s some work to do tonight to make sure we’re comfortable on both the compounds going into the race.”

Jakob Andreasen, Chief Race Engineer
“A fairly typical day in Malaysia with dry running this morning and a light shower in the afternoon session. On the whole we got through the bulk of the programme and both Paul and Adrian seemed pretty content with the handling of their cars from the start of running. Adrian’s afternoon session was cut short as a precaution, but it did not cost him too much dry track time relative to the others. Paul clocked up 30 laps this afternoon, running both the hard and medium compounds, and is in good shape heading into tomorrow. We don’t have as much long run data as we would ideally like, but we have enough information to make some sensible predictions.”