Force India's Adrian Sutil and Tonio Liuzzi reckon their team can end its season on a high in Abu Dhabi, even though they ended practice outside the top ten.
Sutil reckoned the car was not quite perfect yet, but had plenty of potential around the new Yas Marina venue.
"The car was performing well today, although we still have some work to do to get the balance right," he said.
"We are missing a little grip on the harder tyre but it's going well with the softer compound, although we are struggling with warm up on both."
Liuzzi believes his lowly 15th place on the timesheets was deceptive, as he is confident that on heavy tanks the Force India is very competitive.
"I think we are very competitive and have a very strong car on higher fuel loads," he said.
"We still need to work a lot on the low fuel conditions as we are not spot on but I think we are going in the right direction with the car and can be happy with the progress we made today.
"We knew it would be hard but it's not easy for anybody with this high temperature to find a balance but I am positive for tomorrow."
Sutil had to spend a while in the pits with a brake problem, but said it had not interrupted his day too much.
"We lost a little time with a brake problem in the morning but it didn't affect our programme too much as the grip was not really there at the start," he said.
"At the end of the first I was still able to do 25 mins and two runs and got a good position in FP1 and could follow it up in the second practice too."