Adrian Sutil is staying with Force India after impressing his team bosses again during the 2010 Championship.
Sutil started karting at 14 before 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 British driver 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 break-through 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 Fridays for the struggling outfit.
Sutil's performances saw him rewarded with a promotion to a race-seat for 2007 where he partnered Christijan Albers as the team, which changed it's name to Spyker.
However, a change of name and ownership did little to improve Spyker's performances and Sutil found himself stuck at the back of the field in both qualifying and the grands prix.
The German, though, did the one thing needed to hold on to his race-seat and that was to outperform his team-mates, who changed as the season progressed, first when the team replaced Albers with Markus Winkelhock and Winkelhock then with Sakon Yamamoto.
Team-mates weren't the only changes, though, as 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.
However, he finished down in ninth place after being overtaken by Tonio Liuzzi. Following the race, though, the Toro Rosso driver was 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 it would once again undergo a change of ownership with Vijay Mallya and Michael Mol purchasing the team and renaming it Force India.
Sutil, who has a long-term contract with the outfit, stayed on in 2008 but failed to score a single World Championship point. However, it must be noted that he was on course for a fourth-placed finish in the wet in Monaco before being booted out of the race by a sliding Kimi Raikkonen.
So with no points in 2008 Sutil and Force India, who have signed a technical deal with McLaren, hoped 2009's regulations will somehow level the playing field.
Things didn't start off particularly well as the team once again found itself at the back of the grid in the first few races of the season. However, their fortunes turned when they hit Europe and they were now in the middle of the pack with Sutil qualifying seventh in Germany. He had to wait until the Italian Grand Prix though for his career highlight with the team. First he qualified on the front row of the grid and then picked up his first points when he finished fourth.
Although there were no further points after that, the Force India bosses were more than happy with his contribution in the 2009 season and, 27 November, yet again confirmed him for the 2010 Championship.
Sutil's season got off to a good start, at least in qualifying, putting his car into the top ten in Bahrain and Australia. However, a a collision with Robert Kubica in Bahrain and a mechanical failure in Australia meant he scored no points in either.
It was, though, a sign of improvement from the team with Sutil going on to demonstrate that Force India can score points in the dry. In fact, he bagged 47 points with his best result being a fifth-place finish in Malaysia - a massive increase on the six he had netted altogether in his previous three seasons.
The German finished the Championship in 11th place and although he dropped hints that he could move on to a bigger and better team in 2011, will again be spending this season with Force India. But further progress could lead to bigger and better for the German.
