Budapest, Hungary:
Sahara Force India witnessed a bad day in office as Adrian Sutil and Paul Di Resta had to settle for 11th and 18th positions in the Hungarian Grand Prix qualifying race on Saturday.
While Sutil managed to make it to Q2 on Saturday, Di Resta was eliminated in Q1 only.
Sutil clocked 1:20.569s in Q2 but it was not enough to book his place in the Q3. Di Resta, on the other hand, had to bid goodbye in the first qualifying race after setting a poor timing of 1:22.043s.
It will be the second time that Sahara Force India will not start the race in the top 10.
In the German GP earlier, Di Resta and Sutil settled for the 12th and 15th positions respectively.
Sahara Force India had registered their best qualifying performance of the season in the British GP with Di Resta and Sutil setting the fifth and seventh fastest times.
Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton will start from pole position for the fourth time this season after setting the fastest time.
The British driver sounded stunned when his team announced over the race radio that he had beaten three-time defending Formula One champion Sebastian Vettel.
The track temperature on the Hungaroring circuit reached 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit), and similarly stifling temperatures are expected for Sunday's race.
Red Bull's Mark Webber did not make a run in Q3 because of a problem with KERS, which can boost acceleration, and will start from 10th.
Vettel moved to the top in Q2 with Lotus' Kimi Raikkonen and Hamilton close behind. But a late run saw both Mercedes take the top two places.
In a frantic last minute, Sergio Perez, Mark Webber and Felipe Massa made it through to Q3.
Meanwhile, former champion Jenson Button missed the cut for Q3, finishing in 13th.
Sutil, who clocked 1:21.471 and 1:20.569 in Q1 and Q2 respectively, said it was tricky initially and he was happy with his performance.
"The first part of qualifying was quite tricky and it was difficult to deliver the pace we expected. I had a good feeling with the car, but we were not especially quick and I was only P15 by the end of Q1," Sutil said.
"I did not really know where we were losing out, but the team made some adjustments and that improved things for Q2. My lap times were much better and for a while it looked like I was going to make the top ten, but then I got pushed down to P11 at the last moment.
"I'm happy with my lap and that was the limit for me today. P11 is a good place to start because it leaves us with more of a choice about the tyre strategy. The goal tomorrow is to push forward and try to score some points," he added.
Paul Di Resta said it was tough race on Saturday but vowed to come back strongly on Sunday.
"A tough session and I am a bit confused as to why we struggled so much on the soft tyre. Throughout all the sessions we've looked more competitive on the softs, but in Q1 they just didn't switch on," he said.
"We've given ourselves a lot of work to do tomorrow, but we will go away and come back refreshed and ready to fight. We need to move forward so we will think hard tonight about the strategy, but at least we have plenty of new tyres available. I think the main puzzle we need to solve is what happened to our performance today so that we can bounce back tomorrow."
Force India's COO, Otmar Szafnauer said: "Finding the sweet spot with both cars has proved difficult this weekend and I think we saw the result of that in today's qualifying performance. Adrian squeezed through to Q2 and set a time good enough to put him on the cusp of the top ten. That's about where we expected our performance level to be and hopefully he can score points tomorrow.
"The changes made to Paul's car ahead of qualifying certainly helped our performance on the medium tyres, but he struggled for speed on the softs. That's something we will try to understand tonight because we expected him to be much higher up the grid."
