Thaindian News

Shanghai, April 17 (IANS) Force India failed to capitalise on a good show in the qualifying as Paul di Resta and Adrian Sutil finished 11th and 15th at the Formula One Chinese Grand Prix here Sunday. Hispania’s Indian driver Narain Karthikeyan came 23rd and finished a race for the first time this season.

McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton (1:36:58.226) overtook reigning champion of Red Bull Sebastian Vettel in the 52nd lap of the 56-lap race to take the lead and win his maiden race in the season. Vettel’s teammate Mark Webber staged a remarkable comeback, securing the last podium position after starting from 18th position.

A lot was expected from Force India after di Resta made into Q3 in Saturday’s qualifying and started from a promising eighth place on the grid. But the British driver was outpaced by Renault’s Vitaly Petrov on the 52nd lap for the ninth position and later was pushed out from the final points position by Sauber’s Kamui Kobayashi. Sutil had a forgettable race as he was one lap down at 15th position. It was the first time in three races that Force India failed to score a point.

“It was always going to be quite a tough race, starting from where we were,” said di Resta.

“We came very close to scoring points, but just missed out at the end when the tyres had gone. Having gone into the race without heavy fuel runs may have compromised us a bit. We didn’t quite get the aero balance right at the start, but the second and third stints were pretty good, perhaps just a bit longer than expected because we had to stop early to try and cover Michael (Schumacher).

“But we came here relatively strong in performance and I think we have to be very thankful of that. Overall, I am still very happy on how the weekend went considering we qualified into Q3,” he added.

Karthikeyan was slower than his teammate Vitantonio Liuzzi and came last amongst drivers who completed the race. Torro Rosso’s Jamie Alguesuari was the lone retirement.

Karthikeyan was pleased with the result and said the team’s next target is to be faster than another back of the grid car Virgin.

“We met our main objective today which was none other than to finish the race,” said Karthikeyan.

“I don’t think the Virgin’s are that far ahead of us which is good for future races. We now have to improve the car and try and attack from Turkey (next race) onwards. With the new updates and parts we will be a lot more competitive for the next race. Nothing is easy in Formula 1 but we can definitely compete with our closest rivals,” he said.