Sutil confident Force India back on form

The Silverstone-based squad had been at the front in Belgium and Italy, but a lack of downforce meant it was not fast enough around the streets of Singapore last weekend.

But after topping the times in the wet second practice session on Friday, Sutil believes his team will be back on form in Japan.

"I've had a lot of experience at this track from 2006 when I was here in Japanese F3 and I really like this circuit," said Sutil. "It's a great track with lots of fast and high speed corners and a nice flow. We didn't get the chance to do much driving today unfortunately.

"It was a really easy session this afternoon - just 10 minutes and my first lap was P1! This morning we did just 14 laps and things went quite well.

"I was confident we would be back on the pace in Suzuka and at the moment it looks like this: overall we are looking much better than in Singapore. But still nobody really knows the score about the weather and dry set-ups so it will be an interesting weekend for sure."

Tonio Liuzzi was also positive after setting the third quickest time, although the Italian admitted the weather conditions made things quite difficult.

"Today was quite a positive day even though the weather didn't help us," Liuzzi said. "It was a difficult situation and tomorrow it seems like it is going to change again.

"Overall the car worked very well in the wet weather conditions and also with the intermediate tyre balance and finally in the last five minutes we could try the extreme wet balance too. Everything is responding and working well, although we do know tomorrow could be different if the weather changes, but we are optimistic."