The team set out to concentrate on short runs in the morning session, evaluating the weekends prime tyre and togive the team a base setup for the conditions expected.

During the afternoon session, both Adrian and Tonio concentrated on loger runs comparing the two tyre compounds brought to the circuit by Bridgestone.

Dominic Harlow, chief race engineer said "Our objectives today were to assess cooling, brakes and tyres for this event whilst working a little on set-up, downforce level and ratio selection and testing a couple of new items on the car in FP1. We're pleased with the results and I think that our tyre management in the hot conditions looks good. The circuit changes for this year's race are a definite positive for the event and should make for a good race on Sunday."

With a grid of 24 cars this year, Qualifying was always going to be a bit tricky.  The drivers having to find their way around a new layout.  With a number of rookie teams on the grid geting the best out of the car in the first qualifying session would be interesting.

Antonio's qualifying run ended in Qualy Two when he finished in 12th position over all. "I am a bit disappointed as we didn't know what had happened to the car since free practice." he said.  " In the morning it seemed to have a pretty good balance and we didn't change very much but
then we went into qualifying and we had a problem with the traction. That was the main
reason we couldn't go through to Q3. Now we have to work on this and understand what
happened but we believe in the race that we should be really strong as yesterday we were
quick on the longer runs."

Adrian pushed the car even further into Qualifying Three where he ended the session in 10th place, ending his run on the harder of the tyres.  He will have to start the race on those tyres as per the new seasons regulations.

Adrian said: "I'm very happy. I think it was a great achievement to go into Q3 at the first race: our best start to the season for a long time. The team should be very proud of it, I am very proud of this, so let's see how it goes tomorrow. Our goal is now to finish in the points. At the moment I'm in tenth and hopefully we can make one or two positions up as I'm the only car on the hard tyre so it may be an advantage. I'm surprised that the others were on the soft tyres so our decision could pay off tomorrow. We are strong under heavy fuel loads but we were very fast in Q1
and Q2 when everyone was on soft tyres so there are a few more positions we could gain.
We worked very hard over the winter and over the last four years and it's nice to see it giving
dividends now."

Race day made for a good day in the history of Force India.  Adrian Sutil made contact with Robert Kubica's car at the start of the race after Mark Webber deployed the new Red Bull / Dick Dastardly smoke screen device at the first corner.  Adrian's spin took him to the back of the field, eventually fighting back to finish the race in 12th position.

Tonio, promoted up a couple of spots thanks to Adrian's spin, drove a faultless race and brought the VJM03 home in 9th position and thanks to the new points system scorred two points for the team and his first F1 points since China in 2007.

"I'm really pleased. We achieved our target and scored some points, which is a great result for
myself and for the team." Commented Tonio.  "It was a difficult race as with this amount of fuel and the tyres, plus the heat, we had a bit to control but overall I think we can be pretty happy about how we handled it and to be in the points is magic. All the top teams finished ahead of us and there were no failures or reliability issues so it was the maximum we could have achieved. I'm now looking forward to Australia where we will get some more updates and it could put us in an
even better position for the next race. Overall a great result for the team."

Adrian said "At least we finished. After the incident in the first corner it was the maximum we could do. We had a good race in the end, learning a lot about the tyres and how the car behaves at the end of a race, but the incident pretty much destroyed my hopes of getting any points. I don't really know what happened in that corner - I was driving and then there was a big cloud of smoke so I was blind going into it. I touched someone and spun and that was it. It's a shame but we will keep pushing for the next race."

The team have had their best start to a chanpionship season since their inception.  They have started on the path to reach their goal for the season to finish in fifth place in the constructors championship.

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