Force India was at a loss to explain why both of its drivers suddenly suffered from a severe lack of grip on their ultimately failed final runs to make it beyond Q1.
The Silverstone-based team had run in and around the top 10 positions with Adrian Sutil throughout practice in Abu Dhabi, with its Mercedes-powered VJM02 proving particularly potent in the long straights of the middle sector.
However, instead of challenging for Q3, the former back-of-the-grid squad slumped to just its fourth double Q1 elimination in the last 12 races after only managing to set the 17th and 18th fastest times.
Tonio Liuzzi, who will start at the head of the grid’s penultimate row after managing to outqualify Sutil for the first time, said grip levels suddenly went away from him when he went out on a second set of soft tyres.
“I was pretty happy on the first run of Q1 as the car felt really good and I was confident that we had the pace to get through to Q2,” said the Italian.
“But then after we changed the tyres for the second run we had a strange problem in that the grip was not there any more.
“It felt weird to drive with so much less grip compared to the run before.
“Usually the tracks improve as we run more but this was very strange.
“We should have been in Q2 so we have to understand how this happened – whether it was the tyres or the tyre pressures, we need to work on this now.”
Sutil expressed his frustration with the way the session panned out, saying the lack of grip made it a challenge to keep the car on the circuit.
“A very short session with a lot of problems. The car didn't seem to have any grip at all, particularly on the rear, and there was just so much oversteer that I was just struggling to keep the car on the circuit,” the German bemoaned.
“I'm obviously very disappointed and we need to figure out what happened.
“The focus will now be on the race; there's still a long way to go and of course I will try my best to get a good result.”
Although he says the VJM02's pace had been good when it completed longer fuel-run simulations on Friday, Liuzzi conceded it was unlikely the team would now be adding to its season’s total of 13 points in Sunday’s final race.
“For sure with a lot of fuel we showed a really good performance yesterday but starting so far back will not make it easy, although in Brazil we did show that we can get very close to the points from this position,” Liuzzi said.
“It will be difficult but I think 10th will be possible tomorrow, but points are always the aim.”