Thursday, July 16, 2009

Mallya seeks salvation in Hungary after heartbreak in Germany

NURBURGRING: Taking positives, and not points, has been the recurring theme in Force India's F1 story so far but chairman Vijay Mallya still manages

It's just a shame that after such a great weekend performance we don't have any points to show for it. But that's motorsport, these incidents happen," Mallya said after the team's heart-wrenching German Grand Prix campaign.

"The next race is only in a couple of weeks so we'll refocus on that and try to finish the job in Hungary," he added.

Force India made all the right noise going into the German Grand Prix with both Adrian Sutil and Giancarlo Fisichella posting top six times in Friday's practice sessions. Sutil sprang another surprise by gate crashing into Q3 and booking himself the seventh slot on the starting grid, his and the team's best position ever.

Sutil's fairytale home race, however, met a sad end. In a repeat of last year's Monaco Grand Prix, Ferrari driver Kimi Raikkonen crashed with Adrian Sutil's VJM02 which, was exiting the pits after running a fairytale second, claiming the front wing and necessitating an emergency pit-stop that put paid to all point hopes.

Sutil was in tears after last year's Monaco mishap but the young German seemed to have matured this time as he took the setback in stride.

"We shouldn't be that disappointed with this result as we have had a good weekend and the next one will come very soon," Sutil said, putting behind the disappointment.

Recalling the accident, Sutil said, "When I went out of the pit lane I saw Kimi coming on the outside of the corner and I just tried to hold my line but he went to the outside and I touched him and lost part of my front wing.

"That's really when I thought the race was over for the points as I had to come back in," he said.

"Overall I think we've learnt a lot. It's the first time starting in the top 10 and it's a different race up there. It's been a good push for everyone in the team to get some more development so we can finally get some points," Sutil added.

Fisichella too was not overtly gloomy and sounded happy with the pace of the car.

"After the qualifying I had, I thought it would be a difficult race but I really enjoyed it and again got close to the points," said the Italian who finished 11th.

"I think we can be quite happy with this weekend, even if again we didn't get any points. We've taken a step forward and with some more developments coming through I think we could really have some more great races," he said.

SourceZ:TOI

No comments: