Adrian Sutil continued Force India’s love-affair with the Spa-Francorchamps circuit, after coming home in fifth place.
The German driver made the most of his Mercedes engine to power his way up the field from eighth on the grid and was later delighted with the performance of his VJM03.
Meanwhile, team-mate Tonio Liuzzi just missed out on a points-placed finish after damaging his front wing after a collision with the Red Bull of Sebastian Vettel.
Adrian Sutil – 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.â€
Vitantonio Liuzzi – 11th:“It was a tough race and it was a shame we couldn’t get any points here today. We had a good start but I suffered a lot of front and rear graining on the soft compounds early on and also some damage to the front wing. 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 and that cost us points in this race. 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.â€
Otmar Szafnauer, Force India 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. Tonio was unlucky to miss out on the points due to losing his front wing when Vettel ran into him. The points are crucial for the championship at the moment and the pace also bodes well for Monza in a couple of weeks’ time.â€
*Tonio Liuzzi inherited the final points finish following Jaime Alguersuari’s 20-second penalty.
