Adrian Sutil proved his might in wet conditions yet again while his teammate Vitantonio Liuzzi made his maiden Q3 appearance of the season as Force India secured an impressive fourth and 10th position start on the grid for Sunday's Malaysian Grand Prix.
Karun Chandhok, the lone Indian driver in the fray, however, found it difficult to handle his Hispania car in the slippery conditions and could only manage the 22nd position with 1m 56.299s on the clock ahead of teammate Bruno Senna (1m 57.269s) in the 24-driver grid.
Sutil claimed a strong fourth spot with a timing of 1 minute 50.914 sec, just behind Red Bull's Sebestian Vettel (1m 50.789s), Roseberg (1m 50.673s) and Webber (1m 49.327s).
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Liuzzi, who finished inside the points bracket in the first two races, continued his impressive showing and made it two Force India cars in the top 10 with a timing of 1m 52.254s.
An elated Sutil said it was team effort and choosing the right tyres in the wet conditions which played a crucial part to his success on Saturday.
“It was a great qualifying again for us. As I expected it rained at 4 p.m. It was challenging and the conditions changed a lot over the sessions. Sometimes it was a lot of rain, sometimes half wet, half dry so it was very important to choose the right tyres. I think we did a great job in those conditions and every session we did the optimum,” Sutil said.
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“I am so happy to be in this position now. It's a great achievement and my team really deserved it. They did a fantastic job: being there on the right time on the right tyre was very important. A great job all round,” he added.
Liuzzi said he was happy to achieve his target of making it to the Q3.
“We can be happy about getting through to Q3 as this was our target for this weekend. It was a good qualifying, Q3 started very wet, very similar to Brazil last year, and then it dried up very quickly at the end,” he said.
The Italian said he had to give up on the last run because of braking problem. — PTI