Sutil to start 16th, Liuzzi 17th in Singapore GP

Singapore: Force India driver Adrian Sutil will start 16th, one spot ahead of his teammate Vitantonio Liuzzi when the Singapore Grand Prix Formula One race gets underway at Marina Bay circuit here on Sunday.

Both Sutil and Liuzzi overcame hot and humid conditions to ease through to the Q2 but the second segment proved more problematic for them. Sutil, who finished 10th in the Q1 with a timing of 1:48.496sec, faced some stiff competition in the next round and managed the 16th place in Q2, clocking 1:48.899sec. His outing was compromised with traffic on his outlap and with his tyres not up to optimum temperature, he could only record the 16th quickest time. Meanwhile, Liuzzi was 14th (1:48.988sec) in the Q1, but then he finished an unimpressive 17th with a timing of 1:48.961sec. The Italian put in a good first run but reported an issue with the front brakes during the second session, a release said. "It was a very frustrating session for us overall. The first segment went OK, out on the hard tyres and able to get in the top 10, but then when we switched to the soft for Q2 we couldn`t find much of an improvement," Sutil said after the session. "We had less grip than on the hard tyre and I got into some traffic on my outlap and the flying lap was compromised. It just all went wrong so I`m disappointed. It`s going to be tough tomorrow as overtaking is hard but if there`s a safety car or anything unexpected we`ll do our best to take advantage of it," he added. Liuzzi was also quite disappointed with the result of Q2. "A very disappointing outcome to the session for us. We had the pace in Q1 but then in Q2 on the first lap of my second run I had problems with the front brakes. It was very strange as we`ve not had this problem over this weekend.” "Unfortunately because of this issue I lost the best of the tyres on what would have been a better lap. We will start at least 16th after the penalties to some of the others in front but we will have to hope for something to happen during the race that we can take advantage of as it`s very hard to overtake here," Liuzzi said. Despite the problems, Otmar Szafnauer, Chief Operating Officer of Force India, was optimistic about some good results in the days to come. "Overall it`s not been a great day for us. We were expecting more based on the form we showed yesterday and the general balance of the car, but we hit a couple of problems that took us by surprise in Q2," he said. "We start further down the field than we would have hoped so we will have to look at all possible strategies for tomorrow`s race. As we`ve seen in previous years anything can happen with the walls so close so we still hope to be able to make up some ground," Szafnauer added. PTI