Dominic Harlow: “It was a fairly solid performance”
Saturday ,10 September 2011
Force India just missed getting into Q3 at Monza when Paul Di Resta was bumped down to 11th at the very end of Q2, the Scot missing out to the tune of just 0.006s. Paul will now start 11th, with Adrian Sutil alongside him, and both drivers have a new set of soft tyres. We asked Circuit Engineering Director, Dominic Harlow, for his thoughts on the weekend so far
Dominic, what’s your overall verdict on qualifying?
“I think it was a fairly solid performance, and we were very close to Renault. Petrov pulled out a very good second sector in Q2, and that was the difference in the end. With Paul it was literally a question of a few thousandths, and you can find that in a number of ways, or miss out. We’re reasonably happy with what we’ve delivered, and we’ll see how the race pans out from here. It was interesting to see Rosberg qualifying on the prime. It’s clear what some people are thinking for the race, while it may be a bit trickier for others.”
Paul did his quick lap before the end of Q2 and had time for another lap when Senna bumped him out. Why that timing, and could he have done another quick lap on those tyres?
“No special reason. He didn’t have fuel to do another lap. In any case I think he would have needed a cool down lap before going again.”
You have talked previously about how complicated it is coming here – choosing downforce and gear ratios and so on – are you happy with the package you brought and how you have worked with it over the two days?
“I think so. We would like to have made a faster car, and it would have just needed more of the same really, more aerodynamic performance. It is where it is in terms of the speed we can achieve. With the DRS deployed or not deployed, and our sector times, our balance through the sectors, I don’t think we’ve done a bad job of optimising the car we’ve brought.”
You mentioned Rosberg. Will we see a lot of other drivers start on the medium tyre?
“Now that someone has set the precedent in the top ten I’d expect to see more people start on primes. Certainly we’d think about it as well, because the pace difference from prime to option is quite similar between the Mercedes and our car. We have to be careful not to be held up by trying to run a different strategy.”
Credit: Force India (www.forceindiaf1.com)
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