Force India exude confidence
Montreal, 10 June 2012:Within 5 seconds of pole sitter Sebastian Vettel of Red Bull, Narain Karthikeyan, the evergreen hero of India, who is the only Formula One driver this season, accomplished the 107 per cent rule despite a lousy HRT car which gave him enough problems on both Friday and Saturday. The Coimbatore resident, who is into his third F1 season, will have to do with what he has in terms of a car and will be starting last on the 24th
on the grid.
Narain Karthikeyan HRT, clocked 1:18.330 3.669 the best of his 9 laps in the qualifying on Saturday.
The other Indian interest is Sahara Force India, who continued to show strong form in Saturday’s qualifying hour as Paul Di Resta qualified in eighth place for tomorrow’s Canadian Grand Prix. Teammate Nico Hulkenberg will start from P13 after yellow flags disrupted his best lap in Q2.The Scot will line up behind Romain Grosjean on row four of the grid in Montreal but said after the top-10 shoot-out that he could have squeezed more from his VJM05 car, though it wouldn’t have altered his position.
Narain Karthikeyan said: “It was a messy qualifying for me. On the first set of tyres I encountered a lot of traffic and on my quickest lap I got all the sectors right and I made a mistake coming into the last corner which cost me six tenths. My qualifying has been weak this year and I need to improve this. But we have a good pace and tomorrow we will fight with our main rivals to try and get a good result”.
HRT Technical Director Toni Cuquerella, said: “Today we confirmed the progression which we proved yesterday and that we already demonstrated in Monte Carlo, and I want to thank the whole team for their work. Pedro completed a very good lap and Narain could’ve been there easily. Both we’re comfortably under the 104% and have a good pace with both tyres and we have a good set-up for the race so, although the race will be tough on the brakes, we’re optimistic about our chances. Depending on the temperature we will go for a one-stop or two-stop strategy”.
Sahara Force India’s senior driver Paul di Resta said: “I think we can be very happy with eighth today, which puts us in a strong position for the race,” he said. “There was probably a little bit more speed in the car because I was a little bit over-committed in the chicanes on my final lap in Q3, but I don’t think it would have made a big difference to my starting position.
“In all the sessions so far we’ve shown how competitive the car is, especially during long runs, and I think we can be confident of scoring some good points tomorrow. It will be a long race and we just have to wait and see what happens with the weather and who has the best understanding of the tyres.”
Team-mate Nico Hulkenberg will start from 13th on the grid and the German blamed yellow flags on his final Q2 quick lap for missing the top-10 cut.
“I don’t think that P13 reflects the pace we had in the car today,” he said “We looked very strong in Q1 and I felt really happy with the car, especially after the changes we made between FP3 and qualifying. But I had some bad luck in Q2 when I got caught out by a yellow flag on my quickest lap, because a Sauber went off ahead of me in turn eight and I had to abort the lap. If I had managed a clean lap, I think I could probably have made Q3. I still feel positive for tomorrow and the field is very close. We know overtaking is possible here so I think we can expect a challenging and entertaining race.”
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