By Karl King
March 16 2008

After a worse-than-expected qualifying session on Saturday, Force India fans would have been hoping for an improved showing in the race. However, in his first race showing for Force, Giancarlo Fisichella was hit at the very first corner resulting in his VJM01 flying out of the race. "I lost the race at the first corner because another driver came in like a kamikaze into my car", Fisi said.

"It was very frustrating", he continued.

In the other Force India car, Adrian Sutil had his fair share of troubles before the red lights even went out.

The young German was forced to start from the pitlane after his incident in qualifying cracked his chassis.

However, avoiding the first lap drama that saw five cars eliminated, Sutil made his way up to 13th position by lap 8. Unfortunately, reliability woes took over with hydraulic issues ending his race on the next lap. "I had to go back to the pits", he started,  "so at that point my race was over."

The eventual winner of the race, which saw three safety car periods, was Briton Lewis Hamilton. He stood on the podium with Germans Nick Hedifeld (2nd) and Nico Rosberg (3rd).

With such a high attrition rate, only seven cars crossed the finish line. One of whom was Rubens Barrichello who was later disqualified by the stewards for exiting the pit lane under a red light. This allowed non-finishers Sebastien Bourdais and Kimi Raikkonen to be promoted in to points-paying positions.

Force team owner Vijay Mallya noted the perfect opportunity to score points this afternoon, "it was a shame we missed a point-scoring opportunity here.

"Overall it was an encouraging weekend and the positive is that we have another event in just one week's time where we can try again.'