Adrian Sutil Profile

ADRIAN SUTIL

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Friday 5th January 2007

Adrian Sutil is set to stay on at Force India (at least for now) in 2009 after impressing his team bosses during the 2008 Championship.

Sutil started karting at 14 before moving up to Swiss Formula Ford 1800 in 2002. He won all ten rounds of the season from pole and added five wins in the Formula Masters Austria Championship.

A move to the Formula BMW ADAC championship in 2003, though, saw the German cut down to size as he failed to win a single race and only managed sixth in the Championship.

The following season he stepped up to the Formula 3 Euroseries with Colin Kolles' team. Although he scored only twice the connection he made with Kolles would prove useful in the future, and he moved to the ASM team at the final round of the year.

He stayed with ASM for 2005 and was joined by British driver Lewis Hamilton, who beat him to the Championship title.

Sutil moved to Japan the following year and won the domestic Formula Three championship. He also got his big break-through into F1 in 2006 when Kolles, who had joined the Midland F1 team as their team boss, signed the German to contest three grand prix Fridays for the struggling outfit.

Sutil's performances saw him rewarded with a promotion to a race-seat for 2007 where he partnered Christijan Albers as the team, which changed it's name to Spyker.

However, a change of name and ownership did little to improve Spyker's performances and Sutil found himself stuck at the back of the field in both qualifying and the grands prix.

The German, though, did the one thing needed to hold on to his race-seat and that was to outperform his team-mates, who changed as the season progressed, first when the team replaced Albers with Markus Winkelhock and Winkelhock then with Sakon Yamamoto.

Team-mates weren't the only changes, though, as the team also introduced a heavily revised B-spec car at the Italian GP. And although didn't see an immediate improvement in the team's results, Sutil found himself challenging for points at the Japanese GP.

However, he finished down in ninth place after being overtaken by Tonio Liuzzi. Following the race, though, the Toro Rosso driver was handed a 25-sec penalty for overtaking Sutil under yellow flags. The penalty meant that Sutil was bumped up to eighth place, earning his and Spyker's first point of the season.

It was their only point though as the team announced that it would once again undergo a change of ownership with Vijay Mallya and Michael Mol purchasing the team and renaming it Force India.

Sutil, who has a long-term contract with the outfit, stayed on in 2008 but failed to score a single World Championship point. However, it must be noted that he was on course for a fourth-placed finish in the wet in Monaco before being booted out of the race by a sliding Kimi Raikkonen.

So with no points in 2008 Sutil and Force India, who have signed a technical deal with McLaren, will be hoping that 2009's regulations will somehow level the playing field.

But whether McLaren's support or a more level playing field could put Force India in the points remains to be seen.