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The Force India F1 Team's German Grand Prix weekend got off to a positive start in today's practice sessions at Hockenheim. Adrian Sutil had the perfect beginning to his home race when he set the quickest time in the opening session and then demonstrated a solid long run pace in the second, while Tonio Liuzzi captured the ninth quickest time in FP1.
Heavy rain marked the early part of the opening session, however Adrian was able to confidently negotiate the conditions to top the timesheets, more than one second ahead of Ferrari's Felipe Massa.
With the rain easing for the second session the focus switched to evaluating the dry tyre options available. Both Adrian and Tonio completed long runs however with periodic light rain over the 90 minutes the pair just missed the window to set the optimum lap times. Nevertheless the duo completed their respective programmes to establish a strong baseline set-up for the weekend.
“The first session was obviously very good. We went out on the extremes first of all and I could set some quick times and felt very confident in the conditions,” Adrian said. “When a drier line came out later on we then switched to the intermediate tyres and, again, the car behaved very well and I came out P1, which was a nice feeling in front of my home crowd.”
“In the afternoon I think we had a good balance on the car, but we put new sets on just when the rain came so I couldn't do a good lap time. The position is not really representative of where we are here and we know we can be much stronger. The long run pace was good and I have a positive feeling for tomorrow. |
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