Perez apologises for Sutil collision

The late-race clash at the first complex earned Perez a penalty and meant Sutil had to pit for a new front wing, leaving the Force India 15th and the Sauber 17th.

"I'm very sorry for the accident with Adrian - I am sorry for him and sorry for my team," said Perez.

"At this time in the race I wanted to get the most out of my tyres, as I was under pressure from Vitaly [Petrov], so was quite aggressive.

"Unfortunately I lost the rear when I was already on the inside of Adrian and crashed into him."

Though Sutil acknowledged that it was the collision that had ultimately ended his hopes of points, he said it had been a tough race for him from the start.

"I was unlucky with the incident with Perez, which cost me the race," said Sutil.

"But in the end we had problems as well with the tyres, they didn't last as long as we thought and I was just struggling the whole time.

"We have to understand why we were not so competitive in the race this time; in qualifying we were much better, so we will go away, analyse everything and I think it is good that we have the break now before the next race in Europe."

Sutil's team-mate Paul di Resta looked set for points until he also faded and fell to 11th late on.

"Having gone into the race without heavy fuel runs may have compromised us a bit," said di Resta, who lost a lot of practice mileage to fuel pressure issues on Friday afternoon.

"We didn't quite get the aero balance right at the start, but the second and third stints I think were pretty good, just a bit longer than expected because we had to stop early to try and cover Michael [Schumacher].

"Maybe a three-stop strategy would have suited us better, but only time will tell in the simulations."