Sutil believes he can fight for points

The German, whose team has been fighting at the head of the field in the last two races, posted the 12th quickest time, a second off the pace.

But the Force India driver believes there is more to come and he is adamant he will be able to fight for another points finish on Sunday.

"I was quite pleased with the car but it is difficult to judge the rear grip as we are still having some problems with graining, particularly on the soft tyre compound," said Sutil.

"We still have a lot of work to do but it's only Friday. I think we can do much better and get a bit closer to the front.

"I feel I could definitely have done a quicker laptime as the traffic was really bad and I always lost my first and second laps.

"I still believe we can get into the points and we would still like to be in the top 10 in qualifying; that's obviously our goal for the weekend."

Team-mate Tonio Liuzzi, driving in Singapore for the first time, finished in 18th position, but the Italian also believes he will be much stronger tomorrow.

"It was quite OK today," he said. "The most important thing for me was to learn the circuit and get used to the track, the bumps and the kerbs and I think we are going in the right direction. We struggled a little with the balance, which didn't help, but we did a lot of tests and tried to understand the tyres.

"I think we were on a good learning curve and tomorrow will be much, much better. We have a lot of work to do as we are not spot on with the balance just yet, but we have all night to think about it!"