Force India: Sutil cracks the top ten

2011 European GP team review

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Adrian Sutil had a strong run to ninth in Valencia.

Adrian SutilPaul di Resta
Qualifying position1012
Qualifying time comparison (Q2)1’39.034 (-0.388)1’39.422
Race position914
Laps56/5756/57
Pit stops33

Force India drivers’ lap times throughout the race (in seconds):

https://www.racefans.net/charts/2011drivercolours.csv

123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657
Adrian Sutil116.817107.739107.608107.092107.313107.022106.76106.686107.138107.56107.527122.63112.489105.831109.094106.29105.897105.574105.599105.762105.579105.315105.475105.565105.811105.801106.259120.623111.285104.662104.804104.896104.613104.898104.78105.043104.479104.45104.82105.325105.147105.322120.748110.865104.121104.049103.79104.032105.424103.986104.142103.56103.526103.767104.538103.952
Paul di Resta118.481108.279107.468107.426107.168107.628107.233107.74107.112107.625107.466107.463108.257124.138112.753105.501105.922106.245105.981105.672105.656105.505105.957105.91105.879105.959120.67109.943104.709104.825105.081104.644104.971104.983104.772104.8105.602104.659105.072105.155105.554105.917106.498123.021114.116106.974104.425104.555104.459104.708104.285104.898104.419103.851104.345105.043
Adrian Sutil, Force India, Valencia, 2011

Adrian Sutil

Ninth place wasn’t Sutil best result this year, but it was probably his best performance so far.

He snatched a place in Q3 from Vitaly Petrov , then didn’t do a time in the final ten minutes of qualifying to save tyres.

He passed Nick Heidfeld around the outside of turn two to take ninth place at the start.

He kept Heidfeld behind to the end and while putting pressure on the two-stopping Jaime Alguersuari for eighth. But he couldn’t find a way past: “I tried all I could to overtake him, but the DRS zone did not make overtaking very easy.”

Adrian Sutil 2011 form guide

Paul di Resta

Di Resta’s weekend went wrong before he even got in the car: reserve driver Nico Hulkenberg put Di Resta’s VJM04 in the barriers in first practice.

That meant Di Resta completed only a handful of laps on Friday once his car was repaired. He qualified 12th, behind his team mate for only the second time this year, but ruing a mistake on his best lap:

“On my final flying lap in Q2 I was on the edge and simply made a small mistake at turn 17 – I missed a down-shift and ran wide.”

He felt mis-timed pit stops cost him during the race: “I’m not sure that we got the strategy quite right today.

“There were a couple of laps in the first stint where my tyres had gone off and we didn’t stop early enough. We made up for that during the second stop, when I jumped Heidfeld and Barrichello, but I lost out again at my final stop.

“It’s tough when the tyres go off because it costs you around two and a half seconds per lap, which is a lot when the fight in the middle of the pack is so close.”

The lap times show Di Resta particularly struggled on laps 13 and 14. His late switch from soft to medium tyres for his final stint also cost him time, and dropped him to 15th place.

He recovered one spot by passing Kamui Kobayashi on lap 47, but couldn’t do the same to Sebastien Buemi.

Paul di Resta 2011 form guide

Nico Hulkenberg

Drove Paul di Resta’s car in first practice. He crashed under braking for turn 12 early in the session.

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    Keith Collantine
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    13 comments on “Force India: Sutil cracks the top ten”

    1. Congratulations to Adrian, a great race for him… He is maybe a bit slower in qualy then Di Resta, but still has scored much more points on Sunday so far…

    2. Those new glasses of Adrian’s obviously helped.

    3. Good job by Sutil, he badly needed a performance like that. If he could do that every race I don’t think he would be as maligned as he is; he desperately needs to cut out the errors and develop a bit of consistency.

      1. Yeah, cut out errors, not throats…

        1. That was cruel…

        2. Not cool…

      2. I think Sutil showed again that he is adept on street circuits but perhaps either him or the car is letting him down on the more downforce-dependant circuits. And going by the general characteristics exhibited by the VJM FI F1 Car over the past few seasons it could well be the latter.

    4. Maybe…:D

      But I think more possible is that he is a bit worried about his seat after recently confirmed legal action from Lux…

    5. ScottishNotBritish
      27th June 2011, 13:42

      Good run from Adrian.

      However, do the mid-field teams need to think about adopting different strategies for their two drivers? Yesterday Di Resta was compromised because his teammate was always pitting at the time when he wanted to be.

      Yesterday was a real lesson to the mid-field teams about how losing a few seconds around the pit stops is critical. Before his final stop Paul was just 6 seconds behind Adrian, after it he was 6 positions behind him!

    6. Sutil cracks the top ten

      Luckily he wasn’t on the podium. I’d hate to see what he cracks there…

    7. Great for Sutil :)

      I love how the wheels burn white hot when they scrape the walls. Is that the magnesium?

    Comments are closed.