Force India celebrate 'clear step forward'

"It's the first race with our quick shift box and I think we have clearly taken a step forward in competitiveness and it's nice to start outqualifying some of the works' cars in the progress," said Gascoyne after Giancarlo Fisichella qualified in 18th position, ahead of the Honda of Rubens Barrichello.

"I am very proud of the team, now we are just 1.3 seconds from the fastest time of the day and really pushing to move into the midfield.

"For tomorrow's 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," added Gascoyne.

Fisichella himself was delighted with his effort.

"I really tried my hardest on that lap," he said. "I think I got the maximum out of the car and the best time we could do, and in the end we are only 1.3 seconds 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. It could be an unpredictable race tomorrow, so let's see how it goes."

Fisichella's teammate Adrian Sutil finished down in 20th position, blaming traffic for failing to heat up his tyres properly for his final run.