Dominic Harlow Q&A
Sunday ,24 July 2011
“We’ll try to react to the conditions”
Force India enjoyed a good qualifying session at the Nurburgring as Adrian Sutil took an excellent eighth place for his home race, which sees him start behind only the Red Bulls, McLarens, Ferraris and one Mercedes. It was a tougher day for Paul Di Resta, who struggled for grip and had to settle for 12th. With rain forecast for tomorrow, anything can happen. We asked Director of Circuit Engineering, Dominic Harlow, for his thoughts.
Dominic, how encouraging is it to have Adrian starting eighth?
“The car pace obviously looked quite good, and maybe we could have got eighth and ninth, but that said we’re still pretty pleased with what we’ve done. I think Paul just found it harder to get the tyres working in the latter stages of qualifying in the cold conditions. That’s where the main difference lay between them.”
Did you expect this circuit to suit the car so well?
“We were fairly positive coming here, to be honest. It’s normally a track where we go OK, and it suits our strengths to some extent. We were reasonably confident with the update. We certainly weren’t expecting to find it difficult as somewhere like Monaco was for us!”
Now that the blown diffuser rules are settled are you pleased that you appear to be competitive?
“It was quite a neutral thing for us, between Valencia, Silverstone and here in terms of the where we were with our programme. Overall we could adapt to any of the circumstances. We’re happy that it’s been resolved, I think, along the lines of free development. It’s been a cleaner resolution as far as we are concerned.”
Everyone is expecting rain for the race – are you assuming that it will be wet?
“So far this weekend we’ve been expecting a high chance of showers, and Thursday was a pretty rough day. But it’s not a given, is it? So we’re keeping an open mind, and we’ll try to react to the conditions.”
Paul mentioned that the team had made some compromises for the race – was that with a view to a wet set-up?
“It’s a more general approach based on how we are likely to run the race, the number of pit stops, the flexibility. It’s not really wet set-up, it’s more to do with the overall race plan, or a race which might be any mixture of conditions, basically in terms of how we use the tyres.”
If it is wet are you confident that the car will be competitive?
“We don’t expect to be losing out particularly – we’ll just have to wait and see what the weather brings. It’s going to be a bit more of a surprise than Silverstone, as the drivers have not run in the wet yet this weekend. There are a few places on this track with the cambers and the hills where you get rivers across the track, so that’s something to think about!”
Credit: Force India (www.forceindiaf1.com)
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