Force India made a strong start to the 2008 Formula One season with Giancarlo Fisichella clocking the ninth-fastest time in the second free practice session, improving upon his 12th position in the first outing, at the Melbourne Park circuit here on Friday.

Fisichella clocked one minute, 28.469 seconds in the afternoon session that placed him ninth overall on the leaderboard that McLaren's Lewis Hamilton headed with a 1:26.669. In the morning session, Fisichella put in a lap of 1:29.230 as against team-mate Adrian Sutil's 1:30.155 that placed the young German in 17th position.
Sutil, however, improved his timing to 1:29.461 in the afternoon, but so did the other drivers as more rubber on the track afforded better grip. Sutil thus finished the session again in 17th spot.

Summing up the practice sessions, Fisichella said: "It was a good challenge today and it looks quite promising. We made a big step forward over the winter and, with the new development parts we have here, we are not looking too bad. I am happy with the job we are doing so far. Both the team and myself are working well together. Although we know we still have a lot of work to do and it is going to be tough, it's a good start." Sutil said he was not too pleased with his first run as he found the track slippery and also encountered hydraulic problems towards close of the morning session.

"I think today went quite well. The track was slippery in the beginning. So it was difficult to find a good balance to start with, but after the first run, I was happy and then we didn't change so much over the sessions — really just fine-tuned everything," Sutil said.

"We had a small hydraulic problem before lunch but it was soon solved and we could do several longer runs in the second free practice with some good lap times. At the end, it was a little bit unlucky; I had some traffic on my fastest lap, so I couldn't do a good time with the new tyres. Tomorrow is another day and I think we should be much better than last year," he added.

Force India owner Vijay Mallya hailed Fisichella and said: “We said that Force India would make steady progress and I think we demonstrated it today,” adds Reuters. “A lot of work has gone in during the winter and the tests that we did over the winter period have taught us a lot,” he added.

“Fisichella has been a tremendous addition to the team, his feedback has certainly helped the engineers accelerate the development of the car and the set-up,” said Mallya of the Italian.

“So overall the package is looking much, much better and it’s showing in the timings. How much further we can go is a matter of time. Over the course of the year I’m still confident that we will make improvement,” added the Indian. “We are going the right way and I’m delighted about it.”

Mallya said before the start of the season that he hoped the team could reach the second phase of qualifying and Friday’s showing suggested that was no wild dream. “I had set a target of Q2 during the mid-season of 2008. If we can get it done in the first race, nothing would make me happier,” he said.