Mallya hails Force India's performance

Force India owner Vijay Mallya on Tuesday hailed the performance of his team at the Nurburgring circuit in Germany and said the team has shown they are “truly competitive”.

Mallya said that it was certainly one of the better performances put up by the team, keeping in mind the ever growing competitive nature of the sport.

“It was certainly one of our better performances,” Mallya said.

“Over the last few years F1 has become even more competitive. The gap between the cars has reduced quite a lot from what it was a few years ago. So in this new scenario we have shown that we are truly competitive,” he added.

Force India enjoyed a strong week-end at the German Grand Prix with Adrian Sutil finishing sixth in the race after starting eighth at the grid with a lap time of 1:26.208.

It was the team's best result since last year's Korean Grand Prix, however, there was disappointment for Paul di Resta, who fought back to 13th after being involved in a first lap crash with Renault's Nick Heidfeld.

The result moves the team back up to seventh position in the constructors standings with 20 points.

Sutil, meanwhile, collected eight points from Sunday's race to occupy 12th place in the overall drivers' standings with 18 points after 10 races in the season.

His earlier best performance this season was a seventh-place finish in Monaco in May.