Saturday: Force India losing grip

Force India experienced its worst qualifying session since the Hungarian Grand Prix in 2009 this summer. Since Valencia, Adrian Sutil had always reached at least Q2. While the German driver had placed 9th this morning with a time of 1:41.372, he failed to achieve the same time during this qualifying session and ended up 18th with a time of 1:41.872, just behind his teammate. Adrian Sutil, like his teammate, found himself losing grip after changing tires.

Vitantonio Liuzzi remained consistent between the free practice sessions and the qualifying session. He is still navigating at the bottom of the standings but managed to outpace his teammate on the starting grid. This morning, he recorded the 14th fastest time at 1:41.675 and posted a 1:41.701 in qualifying, placing him in 17th position on the starting grid for tomorrow.

Force India’s goal for this weekend is to secure 9th place in the Constructors’ Championship against Toro Rosso. Force India has a 6-point lead over Toro Rosso, which should be enough. Unless Sébastien Buemi manages to make it to the podium, but with Lewis Hamilton, Brawn GP, and Red Bull, that seems very unlikely.

Adrian Sutil – 9th and 17th (18th time):

The session was very short and with quite a few problems. The car seemed to have no grip at all, especially at the rear. I had so much oversteer that I was fighting to keep the car on the track. I’m obviously very disappointed and we need to find out what happened. Our concern is now the race, there’s still a long way to go and, of course, I will do my best to achieve a good result.

Vitantonio Liuzzi – 14th and 16th (17th fastest):

I was pretty satisfied with my first lap in Q1, the car seemed competitive and I was quite confident about our chances of making it to Q2. But when we changed our tires for our second attempt, we had a strange problem, and we suddenly had no grip. It was bizarre to drive with much less grip than in the previous stint. Usually, the track improves with the cars passing, but this time, it was very strange. We could have made it to Q2, so we need to understand what happened. It might be because of the tires or their pressure… we need to work on that.

Dominic Harlow – Chief Race Engineer:

After our first stints in Q1, both drivers reported that their cars were reasonably balanced but lacking a bit of grip compared to this morning’s practice session. It was then a strange situation since we had fitted a new set of option tires on both cars, and we could only note that we no longer had enough grip to improve our performance and advance to Q2. The car has been performing well all weekend in race configuration, and with a few unpredictable elements tomorrow, we will do everything possible to finish the season with a solid race.