Sutil finishes 7th in the eventful Monaco GP

Adrian Sutil produced Force India's best result of the current Formula One season by finishing seventh in the action-packed Monaco Grand Prix, in which five drivers failed to finish the race on Sunday.

Sutil earned eight points for Force India after returning empty handed in the last four races, while team-mate Paul di Resta finished 12th, an improvement of three position from the grid.

Sutil had started 14th on the grid and had managed to sneak into top-5 but after a late second pit stop, minutes before the messy lap 71, he dropped to eighth.

In the lap 71, Sutil hit the barriers coming out of Tabac and suffered a rear puncture. As he was struggling to keep his car in a straight line, the cars behind him started lining up and as a result Torro Rosso's Jaime Alguersuari smacked into the back of Lewis Hamilton and Renault's Vitali Petrov.

Petrov's race ended at that time as he hit the barriers and his car was damaged badly, forcing the suspension of the race for close to 30 minutes.

When the race resumed, Sutil managed to climb one spot up and maintained that till the end.

After the eventful race, Sutil admitted that one-stop strategy could have failed had safety car not come for the second time, towards the end.

"When the first safety car came out I pitted to take the option tyres. I tried to make them last, although they dropped off with about 15 laps to go and that's when I had a big train of cars behind me.

"It was then that I ran wide on the marbles at turn 12, which gave me a right rear puncture. But that's when the safety car came out and I pitted to change tyres so I didn't lose too much ground.

"It's a great result for the team and we?re all very happy because we?ve been waiting a while for this. I have a lot of great memories here in Monaco and this is another special moment to savour," the German driver said.

di Resta admitted that his overambitious attempt to overtake Torro Rosso's Jaime Alguersuari dented his points chances badly.

"After my first pit stop the team told me that to make the strategy work I needed to pass Alguersuari so I tried to overtake him at the hairpin.