Major grip problems for Force India

The Force India team joined Renault in seeing both of its cars eliminated from the first phase of qualifying at Yas Marina on Saturday. With Adrian Sutil having suffered from problems with his brakes in practice on Friday, grid positions of seventeenth and eighteenth for him and team-mate Vitantonio Liuzzi make for uncomfortable reading.

After scoring his first Formula One points courtesy of fourth place at Monza this year, the end of the season has not turned out to be a good one for Sutil who, having been hit by Jarno Trulli on the first lap in Brazil two weeks ago, was knocked out of qualifying at the earliest possible point.

"The car didn't seem to have any grip at all, particularly on the rear, and there was just so much oversteer that I was kept struggling to keep the car on the circuit," German Adrian explained. "I'm obviously very disappointed and we need to figure out what happened; the focus will now be on the race – there's still a long way to go and, of course, I will try my best to get a good result."