Another great weekend for Force India
Adrian Sutil has secured another points finish for the Force India Formula One Team in today's Italian Grand Prix. The 26-year-old German finished in a fighting fourth position, under half a second from the podium, marking his highest finish to date and his first points since the 2007 Japanese Grand Prix. To compound this success Adrian also posted the fastest lap of the race.
Tonio Liuzzi, making his Force India race debut this weekend, was running in sixth position at the start of the race, however his race was cut short when his car developed a driveshaft problem.
Adrian's five points bring Force India's total to 13 overall, just seven points from BMW and Renault.
Adrian Sutil (car 20): "It was a great race and the car was performing really well. At the start we knew it would be really difficult to defend our position against Kimi and his KERS button and then I was stuck behind him the whole race. I was really quick but I just couldn't find a way past him as the KERS had such a big effect on the circuit. Going into my second stop we had a chance to overtake him in the pit lane and I was pushing really hard but I was a bit late on the brakes into the box. I think I have to say sorry to the mechanics for going a bit wide! But still they did a great job there. The race pace overall was very good but finally the one-stop strategy worked better than the two stop. All the same we scored a lot of points and I am really, really happy for myself and all of the team at the track and back in the factory and wind tunnel."
Tonio Liuzzi (car 21): "Finally, I am racing again and I gave it 100%. We didn't make any mistakes and everything was perfect until we were in a great position, but that's racing unfortunately. I had an unusual problem, the transmission started making a strange noise and then I lost drive and couldn't push. That's racing it was just a shame as we didn't have a reliability problem until now, but that's how it is. We won't give up though until the end of the season, we want to get lots of points and I am sure we will make it."
Dr Vijay Mallya, chairman and team principal: "It's been another great weekend for Force India. We thought the podium would be a dream here going into the weekend and at the end of the race we were less than half a second away. Adrian drove a fantastic race and richly deserved those points. Tonio too almost had a perfect start to his Force India race career, but unfortunately we couldn't give him the reliability he deserved. Nevetheless he has marked himself out as a real star and I am sure that he will get his own points opportunities further down the line. We can go to Singapore on a real high now. We know the car is good and with more to come development-wise for this race we can be very confident of continuing this form."
