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 Sutil Paul di Resta
Qualifying position 10 12
Qualifying time comparison (Q2) 1’39.034 (-0.388) 1’39.422
Race position 9 14
Laps 56/57 56/57
Pit stops 3 3

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

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

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57
Adrian Sutil 116.817 107.739 107.608 107.092 107.313 107.022 106.76 106.686 107.138 107.56 107.527 122.63 112.489 105.831 109.094 106.29 105.897 105.574 105.599 105.762 105.579 105.315 105.475 105.565 105.811 105.801 106.259 120.623 111.285 104.662 104.804 104.896 104.613 104.898 104.78 105.043 104.479 104.45 104.82 105.325 105.147 105.322 120.748 110.865 104.121 104.049 103.79 104.032 105.424 103.986 104.142 103.56 103.526 103.767 104.538 103.952
Paul di Resta 118.481 108.279 107.468 107.426 107.168 107.628 107.233 107.74 107.112 107.625 107.466 107.463 108.257 124.138 112.753 105.501 105.922 106.245 105.981 105.672 105.656 105.505 105.957 105.91 105.879 105.959 120.67 109.943 104.709 104.825 105.081 104.644 104.971 104.983 104.772 104.8 105.602 104.659 105.072 105.155 105.554 105.917 106.498 123.021 114.116 106.974 104.425 104.555 104.459 104.708 104.285 104.898 104.419 103.851 104.345 105.043
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.