Force India joined F1's newcomers, Lotus, Virgin and Hispania, at the back of the timesheets in Friday's Hungarian practice...
Force India:
Adrian Sutil: "Today my main goal was to get as much running as possible with the new blown diffuser. We made very good progress in this regard and didn't have any real problems with it, which is a major achievement given how big a component it is to introduce. It seemed to work quite well with the various mappings, and also the temperatures look under control so we can be quite confident in it. But in general we didn't get the best out of the car today. We are struggling a little on the softer tyre and neither Tonio nor myself could improve from the hard tyre. There doesn't seem to be a peak with it, unlike the hard tyre that you know will peak and come in, but it's much more difficult to understand where we are with the soft one. We'll continue to look at it and hope that we can improve tomorrow."
Tonio Liuzzi: "As always in Hungary the circuit was quite low grip in the second session, although it looked pretty clean. It was very slippery in places but it should improve for tomorrow as more rubber gets laid down. For now the balance is quite good, particularly on the hard tyre, but we need to understand why we didn't improve on the soft compound. It's going to be a tough weekend for us, but we've done some productive running today and will look at everything overnight to try and find some more time tomorrow."
Lotus:
Jarno Trulli: "It was a good, trouble free Friday session, so I'm very happy with how it went. We did a lot of work on the setup so generally the car balance hasn't been too bad. Obviously it's a bumpy circuit which evolves all the time, so it's important to follow up the evolution. We've also been able to evaluate the tyres, which is important for both qualifying tomorrow and for the race on Sunday."
Heikki Kovalainen: "The track is good and there's a great atmosphere out there. This morning we were able to complete the programme without any problems, but when I went out this afternoon we almost immediately had a mechanical issue that unfortunately the boys couldn't fix, so we lost the afternoon session. That's the way it goes sometimes, but I'm sure that we'll be ok tomorrow. It's still too early to say how well suited the car is to the track, I'd have obviously had a better idea if I'd been able to run this afternoon, but this morning was pretty encouraging, and it's really not too bad at all when we look at our direct competitors."
Virgin:
Timo Glock: "A normal Friday for us without any problems with the car, so it has been quite an easy day for us. We did a lot of set-up work, In terms of our speed we are not where we want to be just yet, but we have a good baseline with which to start the weekend."
Lucas di Grassi: "We have had a good Friday without any reliability problems so the weekend has started smoothly. We did all the work we needed to do and I am looking forward to improving the car even more tomorrow and continuing the progress. I hope the weather stays stable so we can have a good qualifying session."
Hispania:
Bruno Senna: "In the first session, the track was very 'green' and the grip level was quite low. We tried some aero settings in preparation for the qualifying and the race. We could fulfill our testing program and, as we completed almost a whole race distance, you can see that the car is reliable."
Sakon Yamamoto: "We had some problems on the car this morning, so we couldn't go through the whole program. In the second practice session, we could fulfill the program and we got a lot of good data. We keep on working hard and getting ready for tomorrow."
