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An unspectacular day as Force introduce new box
By Karl King August 1 2008
On a cloudy day over the Hungaroring today the Force India continued their running of their seamless shift gearbox ready for its introduction at the European GP at Valencia in three weeks time. In the timesheets the team were scarcely removed from the bottom with Adrian 18th in both sessions and Fisi one position behind in FP1 and one in front in FP2.

Sebastian Vettel occupied last place in both sessions due to problems in the German's Toro Rosso.

In first practice Adrian was less than a tenth slower than the car in front of him - the Williams of Kazuki Nakajima. In the second session the Force India cars were on par with the Hondas - the FI cars being the meat in the green squad's sandwich. Rubens Barrichello was nine tenths slower than Sutil in this session and Jenson Button was just 0.047s faster than Fisi. However in FP1 both Hondas were between 3 and 6 tenths faster than the pace of the Force cars.

Adrian explained that he was unluckier not to get a faster time in the second session, "On my last run I had some traffic and couldn't really get the maximum out of it but I have a good feeling all the same."

He was happy with how the rest of the day went though, "the gearbox did a good job and we didn't have any issues at all. The car balance was still difficult as the track is not yet at its best so it was hard to find a good set-up."

Fisi echoed the optimism of his team mate regarding the new 'box, "The upshift is better with the new gearbox and obviously a good step forward, but unfortunately for us we are not going to use it tomorrow and Sunday.

"We are struggling with the grip level at the moment as there is a lot of inconsistency and the balance is not quite there. Over the day the track conditions did improve a lot and the last 10 to 15 minutes of the second session were much better."

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