Force India driver Adrian Sutil delighted with his performance at the Abu Dhabi GP – Formula 1 news
Force India driver Adrian Sutil said that a strategy change helped him secure 8th place in the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
Sutil started the race at ninth, but when Sebastian Vettel shockingly retired on the first lap due to a tyre puncture, the Force India driver moved to eighth. Sutil had a good start and kept his pace up with Michael Schumacher.
However, Sutil’s tyres degraded severely which caused him to change his one stop strategy to two stops, which according to him helped him maintain his good showing at the race.
“Today's result is great for the team and just what we needed,” Sutil said. “Initially we were planning to do a one-stop race, but the team took the decision to switch to a two-stop strategy because the soft tyre did not last as long as we thought it would.
So it was a good call by the team to make the change.”
Throughout the race Sutil had been performing consistently and although he had been ahead of former champion Schumacher for a number of laps, he finished 1.1 seconds behind him. The Force India driver mentioned that he missed out on the seventh position
at Abu Dhabi due to the long session he had with the second set of soft tyres he had on the car.
The tyres became degraded and slowed down his pace a bit, which let Schumacher pass him. Yet Sutil said that he is happy with the way he has performed. He also said that main priority for him and the team was to earn points and he has been able to achieve
that, which makes him happy.
It also puts Force India in a very strong position for the final race. They are standing at sixth position in the constructors’ championship are looking strong to finish at that position which is one better than last season so they must be really happy with
their performance of the season. It also will give Force India and Sutil much needed impetus for the 2012 season.
It will be interesting to see how well Sutil finishes the season with the final race due to be held in Brazil later in the month.
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