Force India's drivers miss top-10 mark at Silverstone

None of the drivers of Sahara Force India will start in top-10 at Sunday's British Grand Prix as Paul di Resta missed out on Q3 by a whisker and Nico Hulkenberg despite securing ninth position will start at 14th after a gear box penalty.

Di Resta was almost in Q3 but was bumped into by Romain Grosjean, who spun but got away since his timing in that lap was not an improvement on his previous best.

Di Resta, for whom it is a home race, will start the race in 11th position.

Ferrai's Fernando Alonso took pole in the qualifying session, that took more than two and a half hours to complete due to wet conditions.

Hulkenberg had secured ninth position but copped a five-place grid penalty due to change in gear box.

"It was a very long session with the delay, but I think I made the most of the conditions in Q1 and Q2. But I don't understand where the pace went in Q3 when I was on the intermediates because the car felt more tricky to drive and the laptime didn't come so easy. I was actually hoping for a better position in Q3 than P9, especially with the five-place penalty I have for tomorrow," Hulkenberg said.

"We actually took a bit of a gamble on the qualifying session being dry and that's the direction we took with the set-up, but it made driving very difficult in today's wet conditions.

"I think some other cars went more aggressive with a full wet set-up so hopefully my gamble will come back to me tomorrow in the race. Of course I would like to be starting further towards the front, but we are going into the race with a lot of unknowns in terms of set-up data and tyre performance. Anything is possible in the race and we won't give up," Di Resta said.

India's Narain Karthikeyan will start the race in 23rd position.

Photograph: Andrew Hone/Getty Images