Force India downplays lack of running after pulling out of Bahrain GP practice

The team has elected not to run in Friday afternoon's session at Sakhir in the wake of the incident on Wednesday when members of its crew were caught up with protestors.

Force India completed a soft tyre run - which would usually be saved for Friday afternoon - in the morning session, and is now converting its cars to Saturday specification before the team leaves the circuit early.

Chief engineer Jakob Andreasen said Force India had made sure it did enough work in the morning to compensate for the lack of practice two running.

"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," he said.

Although a Force India statement said it was missing practice two "for logistical reasons the team will run a rescheduled programme for the rest of the weekend, which will result in the team missing second practice to ensure the most competitive performance in FP3, qualifying and the race", deputy team principal Bob Fernley told reporters earlier in the day that a desire to travel back from the circuit before darkness was the key factor.

"We are looking at it from the point of view of ensuring the well being of everybody and the comfort of everybody is in place. And that is the key objective for us," he said.

"We have had issues as you all know with things, and we have to make sure that the crew are comfortable in the environment and that is what we are working on."

Fernley added: "We are doing the best we can to make sure the crew are safe. We have assurances and I don't believe there will be any issues. There will be protests and I think it was an unfortunate incident, but unfortunate incidents happen. When it is your team it happens to, you have to deal with it in a proper manner which is what we are doing."