Spa-Francorchamps: Force India's chance of scoring some points from Sunday's Belgian Grand Prix look bleak as Adrian Sutil will start the race from 15th position while his teammate Paul di Resta from the 18th spot on the grid.
Di Resta could not even enter the Q2 as his best effort in Q1 was 2:07.758 from eight laps. The Scott could have taken a better position but his car spun near the end of the session after being bumped by Heikki Kovalainen of Lotus.
Sutil managed to enter Q2 with a lap timing of 2:06.000 but because of a minor accident, his performance dipped and all he could manage in the second stage was 2:07.777, good only for 15th place.
At the exit of Eau Rouge in Q2, Sutil ran a bit wide and then crashed into the barrier which damaged the front and left side of his car.
Defending champion Sebastain Vettel of Red Bull took the pole position by clocking the fastest lap of 1 minute 48.298s and was followed by Mclaren's Lewis Hamilton (1 minute 48.730s).
Red Bull's Mark Webber was third with a timing of 1 minute 49.376s.
Neither Narain Karthikeyan nor Karun Chandhok were fielded by Hispania and Lotus respectively.
Sutil was disappointed with the way things unfolded.
"What happened today is such a shame because the car has felt so good during practice. Q1 was quite straightforward for me, but in Q2 I made a little mistake on the exit of Eau Rouge.
"I think without this (accident), we could have qualified in a very strong position. Tomorrow we expect the conditions to be drier and we know that anything can happen in the race - especially at Spa. So I will try not to be too disappointed today and concentrate on doing a good job tomorrow," he said.
Paul Di Resta blamed it on tough weather conditions.
"Starting P18 is not what I had in mind for my first Belgian Grand Prix. We chose to go out at the start of Q1 and sat out the middle part so that we could make the most of the track conditions at the end of the session.
"Unfortunately it started raining again and I got caught out at the chicane and spun on what would have been my quickest lap. On the next lap, the team called me in thinking the track was wet and that we were safe, but when I got back to the pits, they told me that Kovalainen had gone quicker, which knocked me out of qualifying," he said.
Vijay Mallya, Chairman and Team Principal said, "Today's qualifying session was extremely disappointing. We came here full of optimism and our performance during practice gave us every reason to believe we were in a position to get both cars in the top ten."
"But the classic Spa weather can always make these sessions unpredictable and today we have been caught out. It's not the session we hoped for, but we will come back tomorrow and fight hard to move forward and score some points."
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