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Mallya: We could take a serious points haul from Malaysia

Dr Vijay Mallya praised his entire team’s efforts as both Force India drivers will start in the top-ten in tomorrow’s Malaysian Grand Prix.

The team prinicpal was overjoyed with the performance of the Silverstone-based squad and expects both of his drivers to score points on Sunday.

Adrian Sutil was able to master the wet conditions and take a well deserved fourth place for the team. Following qualifying the German expressed satisfaction with his efforts and praised his team for making the right calls when necessary.

Team-mate Tonio Liuzzi will start tenth for tomorrow’s race after a locking front brake, on his final lap, prevented him from going any faster.

Adrian Sutil – 4th: It was a great qualifying again for us. As I expected it rained at 4pm, I said that yesterday I think! It was challenging and the conditions changed a lot over the sessions. Sometimes it was a lot of rain, sometimes half wet, half dry so it was very important to choose the right tyres. I think we did a great job in those conditions and every session we did the optimum. I am so happy to be in this position now. It’s a great achievement and my team really deserved it. They did a fantastic job: being there on the right time on the right tyre was very important. My time in the end was good for P4: a great job all round.

Tonio Liuzzi – 10th: We can be happy about getting through to Q3 as this was our target for this weekend. It was a good qualifying, Q3 started very wet, very similar to Brazil last year, and then it dried up very quickly at the end. I had a problem on the last lap with a locking front brake and lost the last run but that’s how it is in these conditions: you have to get the right spot at the right time. Tomorrow will be a tough race from where we are. We have a lot of quick cars around us but as we’ve seen today we are strong in all conditions. I’m looking forward to it.

Dr Vijay Mallya, chairman and team principal: Today was a really brilliant team performance, not just from the drivers but from the pit wall and the garage. The interpretation of the data and weather forecast, the implementation in the garage and the calls from the drivers all came together beautifully to give our best qualifying performance this season. It sets us up well for the race, but as we know tomorrow’s result is all that counts. We’ve got to keep this spirit up, keep our heads down and go for the maximum we can. I don’t want to tempt fate with predictions, but I would hope we could convert this into a serious points haul.

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