F1: Sutil targeting Bahrain top-ten

Adrian Sutil is targeting a top-ten finish in this week’s opening round of the Formula One World Championship in Bahrain.

The German driver believes that the progress that his Force India team has made during the winter, which comes hot-on-the-heels of the squad’s best ever season in 2009, means that he can fight for a place in the points in Sakhir.

Sutil is entering his fourth full season of F1 this year and secured a career-best result of fourth at Monza in 2009 as Force India enjoyed an impressive second half of the season. The 27-year-old now believes that the new VJM03 chassis could well continue that improvement.

“Hopefully (I’ll finish) in the top ten, I think it should be possible,” said Sutil. “The baseline car we have now after 12 days of testing looks very good and promising. The changes we have made during the winter have all had a positive effect.

“I would hope we could score a few points (in Bahrain). It is very difficult to say what will happen, but I am fine with any position within the top ten – that’s my goal for the moment.”

Force India’s pre-season testing performances with Sutil, Vitantonio Luizzi and test driver Paul di Resta have all been positive, although Sutil admits that it’s very difficult to judge the relative pace of the Silverstone-based team’s rivals.

“You can see a little bit, but you can’t be 100% sure as you never know what the other teams are doing with their programme,” he said.

“That said, you can tell that some of the big teams like McLaren and Ferrari look very strong on both the long runs and qualifying runs and are always on the top of the timesheets. I am expecting them to be on the top again in the race weekend but we are not far away and that's a really good sign.

“We did our long runs and a lot of work with the tyres so we are fully prepared. We are pretty confident that our car is good enough to be in the top ten in Bahrain.”

Keep-up-to-date with all the latest F1 news by watching Inside GP on Motors TV (Sky Channel 413, Virgin Media 545) on Wednesday 10 March at 9.50pm (GMT).


Andy Wilkinson