Sergio Pérez was satisfied with the performance of his car, as he starts from sixth on the grid. Although his teammate was not as fortunate with qualifying performance, Pérez was impressed with his Q3 lap time, calling it “fantastic”.
The first qualifying session was a little slow for the Mexican, but he was able to improve his time by nearly a second in the second qualifying session. His fastest lap in the final qualifying session was fairly consistent to his time in the previous session, although it was slightly improved. At the end of the day, he was able to qualify for seventh on the grid and will be moved up to sixth on the grid as a result of Sebastian Vettel’s five-place grid penalty.
Sergio Pérez was pleased with the performance of his VJM09:
“I am very pleased with our performance today and my final lap in Q3 was fantastic – just when it mattered. We were strong in Q1 and Q2; I was feeling very comfortable in the car and I was able to deliver great laps in each of the sessions. We are making good progress as a team and our pace over one lap is very strong: it will be interesting to see how we perform tomorrow because we have a fast car behind us and it will be a big challenge to hold our position. This is not a track that helps overtaking so there should be some nice battles. We have enough tyres to choose the best strategy tomorrow and I am optimistic we can come away with a nice result.”
Meanwhile, on the other side of the garage, Nico Hülkenberg was not very comfortable in the car. Force India had made some modifications to the car overnight and following free practice three to improve the performance of the car. Hülkenberg had only spent half of the day in the car on Friday, as Alfonso Celis took over the car for the first session of the weekend. He was struggling with the handling of the car, saying: “I’ve not felt comfortable since I jumped in the car yesterday and it’s been a struggle to find the grip and performance we were expecting.”
According to Force India’s Chief Operating Officer, the team will be looking for points from both cars. “There’s still a long race ahead of us and anything can happen tomorrow, but we have our eyes firmly set on scoring some good points with both cars,” he told the press.
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