Bahrain Saturday quotes: Force India

Giancarlo Fisichella - 18th: "We made a good step forward today and were very close to getting into Q2. I wasn't totally happy about the car balance in the session. It was better on the hard tyres but as soon as I went on the soft tyres the car was much more unpredictable. We made some changes to make it slightly better for qualifying but we still had some inconsistencies. I think that's the reason we couldn't improve the time but anyway we definitely made progress and it was a very good effort from the whole team. Tomorrow we need a good strategy to get to the end of the race but we know our pace is better over a race distance."

Dominic Harlow, chief race engineer: "We have clearly improved the car for this event and out-qualified one of our closest competitor teams. In this respect the contrast to China is obvious and that bodes well for the race. However we didn't make Q2 and to be so close is tough, of course. The track was the hottest we've seen since 2005 so the cars naturally lost some performance. It will be a hard race tomorrow and we're looking forward to giving our best and to another strong showing."