Australia Friday quotes: Force India

Paul di Resta - 16th: It was a good to have the opportunity to start my season today. We were able to complete our planned programme and the tyres performed better than I expected. Overall I felt quite comfortable with the new systems on the car, but until I get into a competitive situation it is still too early to say how we'll do. We have another practice session in the morning, and so we'll look at the data from today and work on the small issues we had and our programme for Qualifying. I am excited about tomorrow, but at the same time there is a job to be done and my focus is to achieve the best result I can for the team.

Nico Hulkenberg - 18th: It was an interesting FP1 and I learnt a lot again about the tyres and the car. Driving with just one set of tyres was pretty difficult because I picked up a flat spot early on which distracted my further running. The rubber wore quite quickly and caused a lot of vibrations, which made it tough to run. But I got some good laps in and collected some good data for the engineers to look at. I am happy to have driven here in Melbourne again and to pick up some more experience and information for the team.

Dominic Harlow, circuit engineering director: We had two objectives for the first practice session; for Nico to gather as much data on the prime tyre as possible and for Adrian to evaluate a new rear wing. Paul drove this circuit last year, so it's not completely new for him. Over the course of the season Adrian and Paul will both share their car with Nico on a Friday, so we're simply keeping things balanced. FP2 ran to programme, with long run comparisons at race fuel and a test of the DRS race mode and SC systems. It's been a productive day and we are looking ahead to what will be a fascinating race weekend.