FP1 & FP2 - German GP report: Force India Mercedes

Sahara Force India had a positive first day of practice for the German Grand Prix, with both Nico Hülkenberg and Sergio Perez finishing the afternoon session in the top ten.

Nico Hülkenberg

“I am pretty happy with today and it was a fairly straightforward start to the weekend. We ran all morning on the medium compound, which looks like a good tyre, and we worked with the soft and supersoft this afternoon. The pace looks alright and I felt pretty comfortable in the car, especially in the second session as the track improved. There’s obviously still quite a bit of work to get where we want to be, but overall it’s a positive start and I am looking forward to building on it.”

Sergio Perez

“It think we were the only team to run the medium compound today alongside the soft and supersoft, which allowed us to get a lot of data about each of the three different tyres. The mediums are performing quite well, which is a bit of a welcome surprise. It’s still early, but I think the weekend has a lot of potential and we’re in a good position to make the most of it. There are still some areas to improve when it comes to car balance, but we should be able to sort it overnight after looking at the data we collected.”

Robert Fernley, Deputy Team Principal

“We are feeling happy with the work we’ve carried out carry out today, but we remain cautious because the temperatures weren’t as high today as what we are expecting for the rest of the weekend. We evaluated the three different tyre compounds and the updates we brought to the car for this race, and we were able to complete our programme without any issue. The drivers were happy with the balance of the car right from the start, so we were able to concentrate on fine-tuning the set-up to get the most performance out of the VJM09. In the end, we got some positive feedback and that’s always good.”