Monza: Force India's Paul di Resta drove an excellent race to finish eighth in the Formula One Italian Grand Prix here Sunday while his teammate Adrian Sutil retired after nine laps. Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel claimed victory from pole position.
McLaren's Jenson Button finished a good 9.5 seconds behind Vettel for second place while Ferrari's Fernando Alonso was third in a race that saw nine retirements.
Most of the retirements happened at the start of the 53-lap race when Vitantonio Liuzzi in his Hispania spun going into turn one and collided with Renault's Vitaly Petrov and Mercedes' Nico Rosberg. The race ended for the three drivers and the safety car was out on the track until lap four.
The accident brought mixed luck for Force India as di Resta jumped to eighth from 11th on the grid while Sutil lost time in trying to get past the traffic at turn one, pushing him to 17th from 12th position.
Di Resta managed to hold on to his position but Sutil retired due to a problem in the power steering of his car.
"I am really happy to finish eighth after what hasn't been the easiest of races," said di Resta.
"My launch was not great, but the guys around me didn't get away well either. Going into turn one I could see a Williams coming towards me so I moved as far to the outside as possible, but there was no option but to bump across the chicane.
"After that we went aggressive with the tyre strategy and I think we extracted as much as we could because our ultimate lap time in race trim was not quite there today."
The four points for di Resta have put Force India at sixth place in the Constructor's Championship with 36 points. The Silverstone based team dislodged Sauber which has 35 points.
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