Force India sits out second practice

Force India will run a rescheduled programme for the remainder of the Bahrain Grand Prix after withdrawing from Friday's second practice session for what it termed 'logistical reasons'. The team took the decision to miss the second session to allow team members to leave the circuit before darkness fell, with personnel from the Silverstone-based squad having been caught up in an incident on Wednesday evening when the car they were traveling in was firebombed [See separate story HERE]. The morning session had passed with both Paul di Resta and Nico Hulkenberg inside the top six on the times with both drivers taking the time to sample both the soft and medium tyres to collect as much data as possible while also minimizing the impact of missing FP2. “A very busy morning programme with a lot to get through considering we haven't raced in Bahrain for a couple of years,” chief engineer Jakob Andreasen said. “After the initial balance checks we looked at our brake and engine cooling solutions and dialled the cars into the circuit with some mechanical and aero set-up work. We have pretty much used up our tyre allocation this morning, which has given us all the data we need heading into tomorrow when we can hopefully deliver a strong qualifying performance.” Di Resta, who was the quicker of the pair, admitted there was some fine-tuning to be done in the final practice session on Saturday morning. “The track was very green and dusty to begin with, but we got on with the programme quickly and did the usual balance work, cooling checks and got a feel for both the medium and the soft tyres,” the Scot said. “The baseline set-up was not a long way off, but our focus for tomorrow is to improve our performance in the low-speed corners.”