Hungary GP: Practice notes - Force India

01/08/2008

The Force India Formula One Team used today's Hungarian Grand Prix free practice sessions to gain further mileage with its new seamless shift gearbox. As such the programme for today was directed towards acquiring as much data and running as possible on the new box before its introduction at the next race in Valencia. Adrian Sutil and Giancarlo Fisichella duly completed 126 laps between them with no mechanical issues as they also worked towards a set-up for Sunday's 70 lap race.

Adrian Sutil: 'Quite a good day today, the gearbox did a good job and we didn't have any issues at all. The car balance was still difficult as the track is not yet at its best so it was hard to find a good set-up. On my last run I had some traffic and couldn't really get the maximum out of it but I have a good feeling all the same. I think we are on the right track and the car is behaving well with no problems. I hope we can translate this into a good performance tomorrow in qualifying.'

Giancarlo Fisichella: 'The upshift is better with the new gearbox and obviously a good step forward, but unfortunately for us we are not going to use it tomorrow and Sunday. We are struggling with the grip level at the moment as there is a lot of inconsistency and the balance is not quite there. Over the day the track conditions did improve a lot and the last 10 to 15 minutes of the second session were much better. Let's see for tomorrow and how it improves again as we use it more.'

Mike Gascoyne, chief technical officer: 'It was good to use the seamless shift box on both cars today and we ran without any problems. We also ran some updated parts for the high downforce configuration and didn't have any mechanical issues, we are just trying to understand the tyres. Obviously the track evolves throughout the day and the event, and was very dirty to start with, which caused a lot of graining on the tyres. Overall we got through our whole programme of work and I think we can have a good weekend. For tomorrow we'll be reverting back to the standard gearbox configuration as it's the fourth race of this box's cycle but we'll be using the seamless shift in Valencia.'