Force India boss Vijay Mallya was thrilled with Giancarlo Fisichella's performance in the Spanish Grand Prix, as the Italian veteran took the team's first top 10 finish under its current ownership and battled for points.
Fisichella ran eighth in the middle of the race, before losing a place during the final pit sequence and then being passed by BMW's Nick Heidfeld in the closing laps.
"I am so proud of this result today: a top 10 finish in our fourth ever race is quite some achievement, especially considering where this team was back at the end of last season," Mallya said.
"Giancarlo showed real star quality in the race, with a good start, pushing hard, keeping it together and actually being in a points scoring position for several laps.
"Keeping the car that was leading the constructors' world championship behind us also put a big smile on my face.
"We now just have to work on qualifying and improve on this - if we start higher up the grid, who knows where we could go?"
The team's technical chief Mike Gascoyne was equally impressed with Fisichella, and agreed that Force India had to overcome its qualifying problems to take better advantage of what was clearly a competitive racing car.
"Giancarlo drove an excellent race and was able to pick up several positions and run at the pace of the group in front as we expected," Gascoyne said.
"Once again our race pace shows well, but we now have to get Saturday right as we haven't got the most out of qualifying yet."
He added that Fisichella had come close to having to stop in a closed pit lane during the safety car, but managed to stretch his fuel load sufficiently.
"It was difficult at his first pit stop when the safety car came out as we were just seconds away from coming in, but Giancarlo did a great job to conserve fuel so we could hang on until the pit lane opened," Gascoyne said.
"We short-fuelled him to jump the cars in the pit stop, which worked perfectly for us, but we then got bottled up behind [Takuma] Sato, which meant we couldn't use the light car to build up the cushion and we dropped a couple of places.
"It was a shame as at one point eighth place was on the cards."
Fisichella was also encouraged by the result, and did not believe that the high attrition rate should detract from Force India's achievement.
"I know several cars had accidents but I did my best," he said.
"After the first safety car period, the car was very good. I was comfortable and I think I was quite competitive.
"Then in the last stint the grip with the hard tyres wasn't great.
"I was pushing but I was at the limit with the grip.
"I enjoyed the battle with Heidfeld - he was quicker than me but I managed to keep him behind for many laps.
"Better than yesterday definitely but we still need to work a lot and find something more."