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Adrian Sutil

Name: Adrian Sutil

Nationality: Germany

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• Adrian Sutil

Adrian Sutil is set to stay on at Force India, formerly Spyker, in 2008 after impressing his team bosses during last year's Championship.

With a violinist father and pianist mother, Sutil too seemed destined for a career as a musician before he started karting at the age of14.

Moving up to Swiss Formula Ford 1800 in 2002, he won all ten rounds of the season from pole and added five wins in the Formula Masters Austria Championship.

A move to the Formula BMW ADAC championship in 2003, though, saw the German cut down to size as he failed to win a single race and only managed sixth in the Championship.

The following season he stepped up to the Formula 3 Euroseries with Colin Kolles' team. Although he scored only twice the connection he made with Kolles would prove useful in the future, and he moved to the ASM team at the final round of the year.

He stayed with ASM for 2005 and was joined by Lewis Hamilton, who beat him to the Championship title.

Sutil moved to Japan the following year and won the domestic Formula Three championship. He also got his big breakthrough into F1 in 2006 when Kolles, who had joined the Midland F1 team as their team boss, signed the German to contest three grand prix Friday practice sessions for the struggling outfit.

Sutil's performances saw him rewarded with a promotion to a race seat for 2007 where he partnered Christijan Albers at the team, which had changed its name to Spyker.

However, a change of name and ownership did little to improve Spyker's performances and Sutil quickly found himself stuck at the back of the field in both qualifying and races. Nevertheless, a moment of glory came in practice for the Monaco Grand Prix when, in the wet, he topped the timesheets during final practice.

And the German also did the one thing he needed to hold on to his race-seat: outperform his team-mates. He was helped somewhat in this matter, however, as the occupant of the second Spyker seat changed as the season progressed - Albers giving way to Markus Winkelhock, with Winkelhock in turn replaced by Sakon Yamamoto.

The team also introduced a heavily revised B-spec car at the Italian GP. And although didn't see an immediate improvement in the team's results, Sutil found himself challenging for points at the Japanese GP.

Having initially finished down in ninth place after being overtaken by Tonio Liuzzi, the Toro Rosso driver was then handed a 25-sec penalty for overtaking Sutil under yellow flags. The penalty meant that Sutil was bumped up to eighth place, earning his and Spyker's first point of the season.

It was their only point though as the team announced that they would once again undergo a change of ownership, with Vijay Mallya and Michiel Mol purchasing the team and renaming it Force India.

Sutil, who has a long-term contract with the outfit, will stay on alongside Giancarlo Fisichella in 2008, a year in which the team are hoping to move off the back row of the grid.