Chinese GP: Force India qualifying report

The Force India F1 Team experienced a mixed qualifying session ahead of Sunday's Chinese Grand Prix. Adrian Sutil will start the race from 10th position, however there was disappointment for Tonio Liuzzi as he will start from 18th position after ...

The Force India F1 Team experienced a mixed qualifying session ahead of Sunday's Chinese Grand Prix. Adrian Sutil will start the race from 10th position, however there was disappointment for Tonio Liuzzi as he will start from 18th position after getting caught in traffic.

Adrian progressed through to the second segment of qualifying with the 12th quickest lap and then, on his very final lap of Q2, posted the ninth fastest time to enter Q3 for the fourth time this season. In Q3 Adrian used the softer tyre compound to post a time that was only just bettered by the Mercedes of Michael Schumacher in the dying seconds of the session.

Adrian Sutil:

Another Q3 qualifying performance for us, I think we can be very pleased with that. Again, it's P10 - I know this position very well from the last races in Australia and Bahrain! The car is behaving very well and we can be happy about the balance we have. It's a bit difficult in the mid sector though as the grip is missing a little bit so we have a touch of oversteer and it's hard to drive on the limit. However from the team's point of view we can look forward to the race tomorrow: I think our long runs were quite good on Friday.

Tonio Liuzzi:

We were fast in the morning and the car was reacting well to changes and seemed to have a good pace. Again, though, for the third time in four races I got caught in traffic, again with a Williams and an HRT. But that's how it is, it happens, we have to look at why and then work on this. Tomorrow I think we are in great shape for the race as the speed has been there when we were on the longer runs but when you start in 18th place it makes life much more difficult. We are still optimistic though and we keep pushing whatever happens.

Dominic Harlow, chief race engineer:

We're very pleased to have another top ten qualifying with Adrian here, with some very good laps. It was still tricky with quite low grip and ultimately we felt that another position or two could have been within reach in Q3. Tonio was very unfortunate with traffic today in Qualifying, so couldn't actually put together a representative lap. It does seem to be a lottery sometimes early in the session given the pace difference between some of the cars. With the possibility of another change in the weather conditions tomorrow, we're confident of a very exciting race and we'll be looking to add to our points total.