Adrian Sutil believes Force India have the potential to close the gap to the top five in Australia this weekend.
Force India had a decent start in the season opener in Bahrain with Tonio Liuzzi picking up a couple of points after finishing ninth. It was a mixed weekend for Sutil as he made it into Q3, but was then forced to settle for 12th after spinning on the opening lap.
The German is confident the team can build on that performance in Melbourne.
"Everything went well until the start of the race for me and then I dropped back down the field but from the team perspective at least one car got into the points," he said. "But now we want to go even higher in Australia. I think there is still potential to improve everything and get close to the top five or six."
The Australian Grand Prix will once again start in daylight and finish in twilight and Liuzzi admits the change in conditions could have an effect on the tyres.
"It wasn't a real problem last year - there was just one corner where the sun was very low and it was maybe a bit harder to see but everywhere else it was okay," he said.
"The real challenge is that it can be critical with the temperature as the sun goes down and when you are on the harder tyre you start to have warm-up problems. But I think Bridgestone have worked on this now and so I am not worried about this."
