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Force 'more competitive' with new 'box in quali
By Karl King
August 23 2008
The much hailed new seamless shift gearbox helped Giancarlo Fisichella get closer than ever to the fastest time of the session. The Italian was 1.7 seconds slower than the fastest Q1 time set by Jarno Trulli. However, it was not good enough to make the cut, and with Adrian Sutil 0.7s slower, neither Force India car made it through to the second session.

Fisichella will now line up 18th with Sutil 20th and last - the two separated by the Honda of Rubens Barrichello who suffered a dismal afternoon.

However, Adrian feels he should've gone quicker, as he explains: "The first run was OK, the track was improving and the grip level was getting better with every lap. On the second run I had a good lap, except for a small mistake in Turn 14 where I lost two to three tenths, but it was still not bad.

"Then on the last run I had some problems with the traffic on my out lap and couldn't warm up the tyres, so they weren't ready for the first couple of corners so I locked up in the first corner. That's why I couldn't improve my lap time, which was for sure disappointing as the final run is always the quickest and I couldn't improve my time."

In contrast, Fisi doesn't feel it could've gone any better, " I think I got the maximum out of the car and the best time we could do, and in the end we are only 1.3secs from the fastest time of the session. It just shows how close everything is now, but I don't think we could have done anything more. It was a fantastic effort from the team and the car felt good."

Mike Gascoyne said the team were 'pushing to move into the midfield' and is optimistic for the race, "we know there will be a lot of incidents and potentially a lot of safety cars, but we know our race pace is normally better than our qualifying pace so I think we can genuinely race with the midfield and look for a potential opportunity to score."

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