Sahara Force India
A realistic Force India duo say they extracted the maximum from the VJM08 during qualifying for the Australian Grand Prix.
Nico Hulkenberg qualified in 14th position, just a thousandth of a second ahead of team-mate Sergio Perez.
"We always want to be further up the grid, but being realistic I don’t think we had the performance today to challenge for Q3," said Hulkenberg.
"However, it’s only the first qualifying session of the season, so it’s still very early days and we have a lot of development work ahead of us.
"I enjoyed the qualifying session today: it was good fun out there and I felt comfortable in the car, and as a team we squeezed everything we could from the session.
"For tomorrow, I’m optimistic that our race pace will be stronger than our qualifying pace, as was often the case last year, so I’m looking forward to the race."
Perez believes that Force India could target a top 10 finish and score some points.
"It was quite a difficult qualifying session and the windy conditions seemed to have a big impact on our car," he said.
"In terms of performance, I think we are where we predicted because we knew Q2 was achievable and we managed to get the maximum from the car. For tomorrow, we know this is a race where anything can happen: it’s unpredictable and sometimes you have to be patient.
"We need to see what the weather is like because the wind and track temperature will play a big part. Whatever happens, I will work hard to have a competitive race and target some points."
