The hills and valleys of the Ardennes forest reverberated with the sound of Formula One engines as practice for this weekend's Belgian Grand Prix got underway today at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit.

After rain blighted the morning session, most of the Force India Formula One Team's job list was condensed into the dry afternoon practice. With no further heavy showers predicted over the weekend, Adrian and Giancarlo ran just three laps on intermediate tyres and one later lap on extreme wets in the morning, Giancarlo being the quickest driver in the wet.

For the later practice the rain cleared, allowing an abbreviated programme of both long and shorter runs, tyre evaluation, gathering information on different wing levels and the handling of the VJM02 in low downforce configuration, which has not been used so far this season. Giancarlo recorded a quickest lap of 1:47.506, which placed him 6th fastest, while Adrian was two tenths slower in 13th.

“We had a lot of understeer at the beginning of the afternoon but we improved the balance of the car and made a good step forward for the last run of the day,” Giancarlo said. “My last lap was good and I'm happy I could record a quick time. We still need to work on the amount of understeer we have but apart from that today was not too bad. It's difficult to say where we will be tomorrow, but top 15 is realistic and of course we will try our best to get in the top 10 but it is going to be very difficult.”

The team will use tomorrow's final practice session to fine tune balance before qualifying takes place at 14:00hrs local time.