Mallya urges search for qualifying pace

Although the outfit clame close to scoring their maiden Formula One points, their chances have been dented by their failure to make it through to Q2 so far this season.

And the fact their car seems so good in race pace means Mallya is urging them to work out why Giancarlo Fisichella and Adrian Sutil cannot extract more speed from it on Saturday afternoons.

"Clearly what I'm noticing is that we're not able to get good qualifying pace out of the car, and we need to investigate that thoroughly," said Mallya on Friday. "But our race pace has always been decent.

"People have commented on it, and we showed it again in Spain. We are looking into why we cannot reproduce the lap times in qualifying now and I'm confident we will get to the bottom of it. We have to - if we can start higher up, the chances are we will finish higher up."

Mallya believes that starting higher up the grid will pay dividends in allowing the team to get into the top eight at the chequered flag.

"We do need to sort out our qualifying pace, which is our Achilles heel at the moment," he explained. "If we start a few places up the grid we won't get into traffic or be a little accident prone like we are when starting from the back.

"This is just the start for us though; nobody expected us to be as competitive as we are. We've been on the grid for little over five months and look how far we have come. We are deploying all resources to improve now.

"No one expects miracles, but the fact we have qualified in the top 17, the fact we finished in the top 12 in Bahrain and Malaysia and now in the top 10 in Spain shows we are a genuine midfield contender now, not a backmarker.

"Of course the field is incredibly tight though, with at least 10 cars within a couple of tenths of each other. It's a bitter contest now where everything counts, but I am delighted to see we are in that game."

And Mallya has defended Adrian Sutil's disappointing start to the year, claiming it is no surprise that he has struggled against Giancarlo Fisichella.

"Adrian hasn't had too much luck. It's unfortunate, but I am sure that his luck will turn, as luck does. He's got a lot of talent, he's quick, and I think he can do a good job for us.

"What we have to remember is that Giancarlo is approaching his 200th Grand Prix, Adrian has competed in just over 20, that's a 10th of the number of his team mate. We cannot reasonably expect him to know everything Giancarlo does, but the benefit of having Giancarlo there is that Adrian can learn and, in turn, grow and develop into a very valuable asset in the future."