Reserve driver Hulkenberg wrecks di Resta’s car

Force India’s Paul di Resta was left to rue a lack of track time at Valencia on Friday, with reserve driver Nico Hülkenberg damaging his car during the early stages of first practice. The time required to repair his damaged VJM04 saw di Resta side-lined for much of practice two, completing only seven laps en route to 14th place on the timesheets.

"The way things unfolded today has been quite unfortunate," di Resta explained. "Nico’s accident this morning meant that my car wasn’t ready for the start of second practice and I had to sit and wait.

"The guys did a great job to get everything repaired in time for me to get out for the final few minutes of the session, but I only managed three timed laps. It means there is plenty of work to do in final practice tomorrow morning to make up for the lost track time."

German team-mate Adrian Sutil, who took part in both sessions, added: "A pretty positive day for me. We had quite a lot of work to get through to evaluate our new aero parts, but that went well and the balance of the car felt okay from my first run.

"We worked a bit to improve things, such as the stability under braking, which is especially important here. As usual I ran both tire compounds in the afternoon so that we have good data for tomorrow. The soft (option) tire was very consistent and the degradation was not too bad so I think it’s probably the better race tire."