18/10/2009
NEWS STORY
The Force India Formula One Team could not capitalise on its strong qualifying performance in today's Brazilian Grand Prix at Interlagos. Adrian Sutil had started from a superb third position but was involved in a first-lap incident that eliminated him on the spot. Tonio Liuzzi had a tough event, fighting yet again with Fisichella throughout the race to finish in 12th position.
Adrian Sutil: The start was fine, I lost one position as Kimi overtook me on the outside. It was fine for the next corner but then Kimi hit Webber and lost his front wing. I was following him through the corner but then suddenly I got hit in the rear and lost control of the car. Trulli was there on the outside trying to go round. It was a really stupid maneouvre as there was no space and I couldn't see him at all. At that point it wasn't worth it and it ended my race far too early on as I went over into the gravel. Jarno was furious and said it was my mistake but I just told him what had happened to me. But it's over and now he's just got to deal with it.
Tonio Liuzzi: It was a long race, starting from last on the grid after the gearbox change yesterday. We made a change to the soft tyres in the safety car period, using them for just one lap to get them out of the way as we felt we couldn't do longer stints with them. On the harder compound in the first stint I had a good pace but we struggled a lot with oversteer on the second so I couldn't get past Giancarlo. Then at the end I had a brake problem, which compromised the race but at least we finished this difficult Grand Prix, which was important. We had hoped for rain as we seemed to be very competitive in those conditions but that's how it is - now we can just look forward to Abu Dhabi.
Dr Vijay Mallya, chairman and team principal: Firstly congratulations to Jenson Button and Brawn GP for winning their first-ever world titles. Their performance this season has been quite staggering and they thoroughly deserve this success. For Force India, for sure we had expected much more from this race. Adrian did an amazing job in qualifying and we were confident we could have picked up another few points, but unfortunately he was just a victim of the accident. He deserved much more. Tonio's race was always going to be tough after yesterday's crash but he picked up another race finish - again by tailing home a Ferrari! We are all now really looking forward to Abu Dhabi. The car's working well, the drivers are confident and hopefully the track should suit us pretty well.