Despite a damp morning session at the Circuit of the Americas, the Force India team worked their way through their job list and collected information on all three tyre compounds with Sergio Perez finishing ninth fastest overall and his teammate Esteban Ocon close behind in tenth.
โWe can be quite happy about today's work,โ Sergio said. โWe gathered a lot of data and we're in a good place for the rest of the weekend, even if I wasn't overly convinced about the development tyres we tried this morning. It's going to be tight to be best of the rest, but I am confident we can do that: the car has been feeling good, especially in hotter conditions, so we have a good base to build on.โ
Track temperatures were quite cool in the morning, but rose in the afternoon to levels that are more representative of what teams can expect for the rest of the weekend.
COTA is a very challenging track on which to strike the right balance between the high and low-speed sections, and that is where the team will be focusing all their attention.
By the time they were doing long runs at the end of FP2, Esteban Ocon was a lot happier, even though there's still work to do ahead of qualifying.
โIt was a positive day overall, testing different things on the car and working towards the ideal set-up,โ the Frenchman said. โFinding the balance hasn't been as immediate and easy as it was in Malaysia and Suzuka, so we still have a little bit of work to do, but we are getting closer to where I want it to be. I have no doubt it will be much better tomorrow. We still need to find something in the slow-speed corners and that's where we will concentrate this evening.โ
