Force India get double points finish due to Alguersuari penalty
Adrian Sutil has finished a scintillating Belgian Grand Prix in fifth position, his best result of the season since the Malaysian Grand Prix. Tonio Liuzzi came home in 11th but gained a place after Jaime Alguersuari was penalised for gaining an advantage off-track.
The result moves Force India 18 points clear of Williams in the constructors’ championship and Adrian into ninth position in the drivers’ title race.
When rain fell just two laps into the race Adrian stayed clear of the ensuing chaos and remained out on dry tyres despite a safety car period. On the restart Adrian was able to jump ahead of the Williams of Hulkenberg into seventh and when Vettel and Button collided he was elevated to fifth. He pitted for hard tyres on lap 21 but was able to cruise past Kobayashi and then Schumacher to regain fifth. On lap 35 heavy rain started to fall and Adrian pitted for intermediate tyres. When Alonso spun on lap 38 another safety car period was called, allowing the German to move closer to the leaders. He finished the 44 lap race only nine seconds from eventual winner Lewis Hamilton.
Tonio Liuzzi was moved up to tenth position in today’s Belgian Grand Prix following a post-race drivethrough penalty handed to Toro Rosso’s Jaime Alguersuari for cutting a chicane while overtaking Tonio at the end of lap 42. The penalty elevates Tonio ahead of Alguersuari and gives him the final point available. The result makes it a double points finish for the team and gives it an 18 points advantage over Williams.
Adrian Sutil, car 14, VJM03/03, 5th:
Another fifth place so I am very pleased as I started in P8. I think that was the best we could do. It was very tricky conditions out there and you never knew what would happen with the weather. When the rain came it was sometimes light in places and heavy in others and I had to really concentrate to drive it home safely. Of course I was racing closely so I had to keep pushing, particularly after the safety car periods when the field bunched up, so we had some great racing and overtaking. The upgrades worked well and we can still improve – it was just the start of the development, which looks good for the next race in Monza as well.
Tonio Liuzzi, car 15, VJM03/01, 10th:
I’m really pleased to be back in the points again this race for the first time since Canada. We’ve always been pushing really hard so to get a point here, and to make it a double points scoring finish for the team, is a really good reward for all the hard work we’ve done over the past few weeks.
We decided to pit earlier and do a long stint with the hard tyres and it was a pretty good decision as we had a good pace on this set and were in P11, not that far from getting into the points. But then Vettel tried to overtake me at the last corner and took my front wing off. We lost more than 30secs changing the wing and without this I am pretty sure we could have finished in eighth or higher. But the race pace was still good, the car has been consistent and better than it has been all weekend so we could be proud of that. I’m now looking forward to my home race in 15 days time in Italy.
Otmar Szafnauer, chief operating officer
We’re obviously very pleased to be back in the points again today. Both drivers demonstrated a strong race pace and we worked well as a team monitoring the changeable weather conditions.. The points are crucial for the championship at the moment and the pace also bodes well for Monza in a couple of weeks’ time.
