Force India returns empty handed from China

Both drivers made good starts, with Paul up one place to seventh and Adrian making up three positions to eighth by the end of the first lap.

But unfortunately, the usual front runners who had started lower down the grid were just too strong as the race unfolded, and the team narrowly missed out on a top 10 finish.

While Paul completed the 56 laps, his German partner Sutil had an incident with Perez, which forced him to come into the pits for an unscheduled nose change in the latter stage of the race.

"I was unlucky with the incident with Perez, which cost me the race," Sutil said after the race.

"But in the end we had problems as well with the tyres, they didn't last as long as we thought and I was just struggling the whole time.

"We have to understand why we were not so competitive in the race this time; in qualifying we were much better, so we will go away, analyse everything and I think it is good that we have the break now before the next race in Europe.

"The team back at the factory did a good job to get us to where we are after these first three races; we just need to work out what happened in particular today to bring both qualifying and race performances together," he said.

Disappointed to miss out on points, Di Resta, who had secured one point each in Australia and Malaysia, said going into the race without heavy fuel may have affected them a bit.

"It was always going to be quite a tough race, starting from where we were. We came very close to scoring points, but just missed out at the end when the tyres had gone. Having gone into the race without heavy fuel runs may have compromised us a bit," he said.

"We didn't quite get the aero balance right at the start, but the second and third stints I think were pretty good, just a bit longer than expected because we had to stop early to try and cover Michael [Schumacher].

"May be a three-stop strategy would have suited us better, but only time will tell in the simulations. But we came here relatively strong in performance and I think we have to be very thankful of that.

"Overall I am still very happy on how the weekend went considering we qualified into Q3 and came close to scoring points once again," he said.

Force India has four points from the last two races, with Sutil securing two points in the Australian Grand Prix.