Force India hopeful of stronger qualifying

The team have failed so far to get either Giancarlo Fisichella or Adrian Sutil through to the second part of qualifying - something that frustrated them particularly in Barcelona when their car showed good speed in practice and then the race.

And although the team are not introducing any updates to their car for this weekend's race in Istanbul, chief technical officer Mike Gascoyne thinks they have found some answers to their qualifying woes.

"One item to emerge in Barcelona was that the free practice and race form was relatively good, but we dropped a long way off in qualifying," said Gascoyne.

"It was clear that on Saturday, fuel corrected, we couldn't get anywhere near the times we were able to do on Friday, even though the track was clearly much quicker. We dropped the ball and we have to make sure we don't do that in Turkey, but we have looked at the reasons and have identified some areas we can improve.

"I don't see any reason why the qualifying form we showed in the first three races where we were very close to getting into Q2 cannot be replicated in Istanbul. That has to be the aim now, but overall we need to get two cars to the finish with two strong race performances.

"We've shown with our finishes with Giancarlo that we can pick up points if they're available and stay with the other runners. We have to make sure we do that in Turkey too."

Fisichella is equally confident that the improving pace of the VJM01 will be evident in qualifying this time out.

"We are doing better than we expected at the moment, as apart from Australia, we have finished every race in the top 12," said the Italian.

"We are still a young team but everyone is getting more confident with every race and getting in the top 10 in Spain was our best finishing position of the year so far. The car balance was good and our second stint in the race was particularly encouraging.

"We need to improve in qualifying now as we had some problems with reduced grip and had to do two flying laps, which isn't ideal. We have spent a lot of time analysing why the performance drops from practice to qualifying and I am hopeful we will not have the same problems again in Turkey.

"Of course at the moment the field is so close that one tenth of a second can mean the difference between Q2 and just missing out, so we have to make sure we are completely on top of the game."