Hockenheim: All set to race on a circuit where he has won many races as a junior, Adrian Sutil is confident of exploiting the home conditions to continue his points spree for Force India at the German Grand Prix here on Sunday.
“I’ve raced at Hockenheim a lot of times with many different cars: in Formula Ford, Formula BMW and now F1 and I’ve had some of my strongest races there. I had a few wins and always when I finished I was on the podium.
“Now it will be a great feeling to go there with a really competitive F1 car and try to get the same success I achieved in my junior career,” Sutil, who is one of the six German drivers along with legendary Michael Schumacher in the weekend Grand Prix, said.
Sutil, who finished eighth at Silverstone after a stiff fight with Sebastian Vettel, is keen to erase the memories of his last race in the home country when he could not score points despite making Q3.
“To get some points on my home ground - for the first time in F1 - would be a great feeling. Last year at the Nurburgring I started seventh but finished out of the points so I really want to try and finish the job now. We have a car that can do it and some small developments that should help,” he said.
The chairman and team principal Vijay Mallya said it’s time that the team shows their car’s real potential.
“We have struggled a little in qualifying for various reasons, but we are improving and learning all the time and I hope that we’ll see a qualifying performance in Hockenheim that is more representative of the actual pace of the car.
“If you look at what we presume to be the strengths and weaknesses of the car, Hockenheim is not as ideal as Spa or Monza. Having said that, it’s Adrian’s home race, and we are going to give it everything that we have,” he said.
“There are no dramatic updates, some tweaks to the rear wing and the rear suspension but I hope we’ll hold position relative to where we were in Silverstone. If we can get both cars in the top ten in qualifying that will set us up very well for the race and I hope get another double points finish,” he added.
Italian Vitantonio Liuzzi, who had a superb race at Silverstone by staving off strong competition from Fernando Alonso, also said that qualifying holds the key for their team.
“We’ve really got to concentrate on getting into Q3 this race. We can easily get into Q2 but then we struggle a little to get the soft tyres to warm up.
“Adrian’s had a similar issue in that on Saturday morning we are really confident after final practice, but in the afternoon it can go a bit wrong. If we can get the qualifying right - as we saw in Canada - then the race will come to us,” he said.
PTI
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