Adrian Sutil has struggled with the tyres this season © Getty Images
Adrian Sutil is determined to improve his qualifying performances in the second half of the season after being outqualified by rookie team-mate Paul di Resta at seven of the first nine races.
Last year Sutil comfortably outperformed team-mate Tonio Liuzzi on Saturdays, outqualifying him on 16 occasions, but admits he has struggled over one lap this season.
"Qualifying has to be a little bit better, I've lost out to him a couple of times and have maybe been a bit unlucky or whatever," he said. "I can do better, I was not in good shape sometimes and had problems with tyres and other things with the car. Sometimes it was just not enough and I was just 100th of a second behind him [di Resta], but at the end of the year you just look at and say in this qualifying I lost against him - that's how it is.
"There is still a long way to go, my races have gone much better so I think I can shine most of the time and score the points and that's what it's all about in the end and the most important thing."
Sutil has had the measure of di Resta in the races however, scoring 10 points to his team-mate's two at the first nine races. He admitted that recovering from a poor qualifying position has been easier this year than in 2010, but is also confident things are getting better.
"Especially this year, qualifying is not that important," he added. "But I still want to do a perfect job everywhere so that's where I'm focusing. I'm feeling better in the car at the moment and hopefully it just goes my way by the end of the season."
Sutil said one of his problems this year has been adapting from the characteristics of the old hard-wearing Bridgestone tyres to the new Pirellis.
"The driving style is a little bit different and the tyres I was used to was the Bridgestones," he said. "You can see throughout the field, the new drivers don't have so many problems with the tyres because they don't know the old ones.
"With the Bridgestones you could always push very hard and be more aggressive, but that's not so good for these ones. Here you have to drive so smooth all the time and always try to save them. That took a little while for me to understand. But it's all part of a bigger package; when the car is better balanced and you feel better, of course you perform better."
Credit: ESPN F1 (en.espnf1.com)
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