Adrian Sutil was happy to secure back-to-back points finishes for Force India, after the German driver made full use of the safety car to move up the order.
Although the 27-year-old was later penalised by stewards for “failing to stay above the minimum time set by the FIA ECU when the Safety Car was deployed”, he managed to hold on to his hard fought sixth.
However team-mate Tonio Liuzzi, who was also given a five second penalty, was demoted from thirteenth to sixteenth and had been forced to stack behind his team-mate during the caution period.
Adrian Sutil – (Finished 6th on track and stayed in this position, despite 5 second penalty): It was an interesting race for me and a very good result in the end: from 13th to sixth, it’s pretty amazing for us, one of the best races so far this season. We made the call to come into the pits at the right time – when the safety car went out I was in the last sector and could go in the pits straight away and then moved up the order when the front guys came in. Then I could pass Buemi on track and in the end it was sixth position. I think we did everything right today and it’s a very positive result for the team to keep the points coming in.
Tonio Liuzzi – (Finished 13th on track but demoted to 16th after 5 second penalty): It was a reasonable race considering we knew it would be difficult to score points because of the starting position and there aren’t many overtaking spots. It was a shame we couldn’t make more of the safety car as Adrian did but basically we came in at the same time and as he was ahead on the road he was stopped in front of me and I had to wait for him to finish and then I got blocked by Petrov in the pitlane. That basically compromised my race. It’s quite disappointing as yesterday we had good pace and we just couldn’t get the most out of it in qualifying. From this perspective we showed points were possible and we can look forward to getting some more in Silverstone.
Dr Vijay Mallya, chairman and team principal: With street racing anything can happen and that’s what we saw today. We took advantage of the safety car period for Adrian, which moved him up into the points and then he did a great job to bring the car home sixth. Tonio was unlucky not to be able to benefit in the same way, however he still drove a very gutsy race and again demonstrated that in race trim the car is very competitive. We’ve come away from the weekend with some more points and I think sixth is a good reflection on where we are right now in the field.
