Sutil left hoping for better result

"It's not disappointing to start tenth but it's not entirely satisfying either as I felt we could have done better," said the Force India driver.

The German, however, praised his team's efforts after another strong showing.

"We made it through to Q3, which was another great effort from the team, and we got the maximum we could have in the earlier sessions," he said.

"I made two runs in Q3 and neither were particularly great as the soft tyres didn't seem to get up to temperature. We've had a good pace through the weekend so we have a strong platform to go from but let's see what will happen on Sunday. At this stage I don't want to make any predictions."

Team-mate Tonio Liuzzi was angry after qualifying down in 13th place, the Italian blaming traffic for failing to set a better time.

"Really disappointing today," said Liuzzi. "There was so much traffic - it was just impossible. Pretty much every lap I had some problem, particularly with the Williams of Hulkenberg and the Sauber of de la Rosa who don't seem to be able to use their rear view mirrors.

"In all the sessions, on all of my runs, I struggled to finish a proper lap. I had green on the first two sectors but then got held up in the last sector, sometimes in the last corner. It's a shame as I definitely think the pace was there to make it through to the top ten.

"I think we need to find a solution to this as there are so many cars and too many different speeds. If it's like this here, I don't know what it will be like in Monte Carlo, which is even tighter."