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Sutil thrilled with car set-up

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Adrian Sutil declared himself delighted with his Force India’s set-up and handling after setting the eighth fastest time on the opening day of practice.

The German always goes well on the Principality’s streets, in previous years seizing chances presented by rain to overcome his car’s shortcomings.

But with the Force India VJM03 now a competitive proposition in the dry, Sutil is brimming with confidence heading into qualifying.

“It was a very good day for me,” said the German.

“I'm very happy with my performance and with the car.

“The set-up was really good and we didn't have to make any major changes over the day, which means there is not so much work for tomorrow and Saturday's final practice.

“The car is going very consistently and I could set good lap times so the end classification looks promising, but we can also be very satisfied about the pace of the long runs.

“We didn't have many problems with the tyre compounds here, just a bit of graining on the soft one, but it's under control and nothing to worry about.

“Overall I think we look pretty strong for a practice day and can be confident going into qualifying.”

Sutil has generally overshadowed team-mate Tonio Liuzzi so far this season, and that trend continued as the Italian lapped more than a second slower in 15th place.

He found the deficit easy to explain, however.

“It was a difficult Friday due to the traffic, as can be expected round here,” said Liuzzi.

“It was tough with 24 cars in the field but you just need to have sensible driving from the others, particularly given the time differences between cars.

“But this isn't going to change – Monaco is always like this and it is always a bit of a gamble but we have to throw our lot in as well.

“Even though the final position is not optimum, overall we can be pretty happy as the car is very good on a high fuel load.

“We need to improve the balance on the low-fuel runs as we still struggled a little with the rear-end grip but in general I think we are in a better shape compared to the last race.

“We have quite a lot of data we can work on tomorrow to try to improve everything for Saturday.”

Force India boss Vijay Mallya was pleased with the car’s performance but is nervous that traffic congestion in qualifying might prevent the team from exploiting its full potential.

“Today we were very satisfied with the pace of our longer runs and the positions in both sessions were encouraging,” he said.

“However what we have seen is that the speed difference between the cars – sometimes up to five seconds – will make qualifying a lottery.

“We believe we have the potential to be right up there fighting for Q3 but we'll have to see how it goes in on Saturday.

“The right ingredients are there, we just need them to mix together in the right way.”

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