Having taken its first top ten finish of the season courtesy of
Giancarlo Fisichella last time out in Barcelona,
Force India has a taste of what may be possible this season - but acknowledges that things could be even better if its gets a handle on qualifying.
Both Fisichella and team-mate
Adrian Sutil showed good pace during free practice for the Spanish Grand Prix, but again failed to break out of the first group when qualifying came around. With no major improvements coming for the VJM01 this weekend in Turkey, the team is hoping that it can work out what went wrong in Barcelona in order to get one or both pilots through into Q2 and establish a platform to repeat Fisichella's tenth place from round four.
"The VJM01 is very good in high speed turns - we performed very well, for example, in sector one in Barcelona - so I think the car will go well in Istanbul," chief technical officer Mike Gascoyne reasoned, "Traditionally too, we have has some success in Turkey and, as we know the car is reliable, we should look to have a good weekend.
"We have no specific updates on the car, and will be using basically the same spec we raced in Barcelona as we are concentrating on development for Monaco and Canada - both of which we have specific packages for.
'One item to emerge in Barcelona was that the free practice and race form was relatively good, but we dropped a long way off in qualifying. It was clear that, on Saturday, fuel corrected, we couldn't get anywhere near the times we were able to do on Friday, even though the track was clearly much quicker. We dropped the ball and we have to make sure we don't do that in Turkey.
"We have looked at the reasons and have identified some areas we can improve. I don't see any reason why the qualifying form we showed in the first three races - where we were very close to getting into Q2 - cannot be replicated in Istanbul. That has to be the aim now.
