After falling down the order in terms of performance at the last few grand prix, Force India secured a double points finish in Abu Dhabi to strengthen their hold of sixth position in the Constructors’ Championship.
While Sauber and Toro Rosso are squabbling over seventh in the Championship, both will have had their eyes on the possibility to moving past Force India to take sixth. However, finishing eighth (Adrian Sutil) and ninth (Paul di Resta) moved the Silverstone-based team fifteen points clear of their rivals, making that possibility recede swiftly.
The VJM04 looked especially comfortable on the Abu Dhabi track, with both drivers performing well in practice and qualifying in the top ten. They held station in those places, moving up one as a result of Sebastian Vettel’s retirement. It wasn’t entirely by the numbers though, as the uniformity was disrupted by the decision to run the cars on different strategies.
“Initially we were planning to do a one-stop race, but the team took the decision to switch to a two-stop strategy because the soft tyre did not last as long as we thought it would,” explained Adrian Sutil. “It was a good call by the team to make the change. I spent a lot of the race fighting with Schumacher and managed to get ahead of him for the middle stint. But I probably went one lap too long in the middle stint and he got ahead of me when we were both on the medium tyre at the end of the race. Still, we came here to pick up points with both cars, and that’s what we’ve done. It puts us in a very strong position for the final race.”
The one-stopping Paul Di Resta was less pleased with his strategy. “I think as a team we can be pleased to have come away with a double points finish having run different strategies with both cars. With hindsight my one-stop race was not the optimum strategy, but we felt it was worth a try. As it turned out the performance of the medium was not great to begin with so the first 30 laps were quite hard work. I had a good fight with [Toro Rosso’s Sébastien] Buemi in the early laps and I think we were quite lucky that he retired, which made my race a bit easier. When I switched to the softs the speed of the car was very strong. To do a one-stop race and come away with two points is as much as we could really hope for. It’s what we need for our fight in the championship and hopefully we can arrive in Brazil and carry on where we left off.”