Paul di Resta was able to drive his first miles in Monte Carlo yesterday. The Brit didn't have a perfect day though. Technical difficulties in the afternoon session meant that wasn't able to complete his programme and finished the day as 'only' 20th. "It was my first taste of Monaco in a Formula One car and I was pretty happy with how things went this morning," says di Resta. "The balance was quite good straight away, especially in the higher speed parts of the lap. Like any street circuit it’s very bumpy here and we worked on making the car ride the bumps better as well as improving the aero balance. In the afternoon there was an issue with the car, which meant I lost drive and had to park up. So I lost an hour of running and didn’t get to run the super-soft tyre."

Force India's circuit engineering director Dominic Harlow was optimistic about the day despite missing valuable track time with di Resta. "A typical Thursday in Monaco with times falling through the two sessions as more laps are run. Our aerodynamic revisions for this event seem to be performing as expected, and the programme obviously involved working on the car in this configuration to improve the balance and adapt to the circuit. Unfortunately Paul lost drive exiting the tunnel after about 15 laps in FP2, and so did not run the super-soft tyre." He notes that Sutil was able to complete his programme and got valuable data for Saturday's qualifying: "Adrian ran a very good tyre evaluation programme in the afternoon and that will be a good basis for our race strategy. There's more to come for qualifying, and we've now plenty of data to analyse with the additional time available tomorrow."

Last year Vitantonio Liuzzi was able to get into Q3 for Force India. He finished the day as 10th. Sutil qualified on P12.