Sutil happy after 'strongest' showing

"Here with the B-spec we saw an improvement," said Sutil after finishing in 20th position.

"We are quicker on the straights and the downforce is much better through the quicker corners.

"It was very close and in the end we dropped down the order a little bit, but the car was definitely good enough to take P18 or better.

"I just lost a little bit of time by locking a wheel in the last chicane that cost a few tenths but I can still be quite happy as it was the strongest performance yet in qualifying.

"We were really close to the field and hopefully tomorrow we will have even more chance of moving up the order," added the German driver, whose best qualifying position of the year is a 19th place.

Teammate Sakon Yamamoto was not so pleased with his day after finishing at the bottom of the times, over 1.5 seconds off Sutil's pace.

"Generally my day was disappointing," he said. "This morning I had a brake problem and then I had to go out for my first run in Qualifying with hard tyres to prepare the brakes. Then I came in and lost some time on the scales.

"We had planned to go out twice on the softer tyre but in fact we only had time to do one run. It was a difficult session but tomorrow I will do my best in the race and I know we can do better from our results in the Friday practices."