Fisichella praises Force India's progress

"A top 10 finish was our target this weekend. We thought it would be difficult but actually today was a very good race for me and we achieved the maximum we could do," said Fisichella after finishing in tenth position.

"It was a fun race. I had a good start and then on the first lap I overtook many drivers and even on the second lap I overtook Kubica and the two Renaults, so I was very focussed at the beginning."

The Roman claimed he could have scored a point today if he had managed a better starting position.

"It was very important with my strategy to do this as we didn't have such a great starting position because of the red flag yesterday in qualifying," he added.

"Perhaps we could have scored points if we'd started higher as eighth was just in front of me and at the end I was quicker than Kimi (Raikkonen) and Timo (Glock). It's a great step forward and I'm really looking forward to the next races now. The team did a fantastic job so we need to continue this."

Adrian Sutil had a disappointing day following his heavy crash during qualifying on Saturday.

The German was forced to use his spare car for the race, but a problem before the formation lap meant he had to take the start from the pitlane. He finished in 18th.

"We rebuilt the spare car after the crash yesterday caused too much damage to my race car, but then we had a problem on the formation lap with the fuel pressure," he said.

"We could fix it and at least start but it was really disappointing today. We missed a big opportunity to qualify well because of the crash and the race was not spectacular as a result.

"I was really just driving around without much chance of overtaking anyone so it was a little boring, but it's another finish at least. Let's move onto Germany where I hope I can really take advantage of the new parts we had this weekend."