Force India rookie Paul di Resta will start 14th from the grid in Sunday's Malaysian Grand Prix while experienced Adrian Sutil had to be content with P17 following a gear problem in Q2 in the qualifying session.
India's Narain Karthikeyan, who was ruled out of the season-opening race in Melbourne, will start from the last row after qualifying for the 24th position.
Sutil did well to make it to Q2 but slipped to 17th position with a final timing of 1:37.593 as he encountered a gear problem.
Resta, who was 16th in the Q1, did extremely well in Q2 and further improved his position with a timing of 1:37.370.
"The first qualifying session was not too bad I think and I felt quite positive. But we did not improve too much in the second session, which I was a little surprised about and we had a problem with a mis-shift. But I know the team is working hard to try and solve these issues before the race tomorrow," Sutil said.
Di Resta, on the other hand, preferred to take some positives out of the qualifying session on Saturday.
"It was a very good job done by the team and equally, I think it was a very good lap by myself. We got more than I think we thought we were going to get out of it and I think that we have certainly closed the gap.
"But tomorrow is going to be a long race, in tricky weather conditions, but I am certainly getting more excited now about our progress with regard to improving our performance in the future," he said.
Karthikeyan clocked 1m 42.574s and that was sufficient only for the last position on the grid.
