> Vitantonio Liuzzi is penalised. Adrian Sutil of Spyker promoted to 8th

The Spyker team has been handed its first ever world championship point after Toro Rosso driver Vitantonio Liuzzi was penalised following the Japanese Grand Prix.

After an appeal from Spyker, stewards ruled that Liuzzi, who finished eighth on the road, had illegally passed Adrian Sutil under a yellow flag on lap 55 of Sunday’s race.

Consequently they added 25 seconds to Liuzzi’s race time, which promoted Sutil to eighth and meant it was Spyker, rather than Toro Rosso, that scored its first point of the season and moved into ninth in the constructors’ standings.

The Silverstone-based team’s boss Colin Kolles had no doubts the penalty was warranted.

“We had clear evidence that Liuzzi passed Adrian under yellow flags and I am pleased that the stewards of the meeting agreed,” he said.

“The decision, which has ultimately given us our first ever point, is a just reward for Adrian, who drove an excellent race today.

“It is also a well-deserved boost for all the team’s hard work this year.

“Now we have this milestone ticked off, we can now focus on moving forward and being in the points on a more regular basis.

“We’re all looking forward to China now.”

Sutil hailed the result, which was also his first world championship point, saying that justice had been done in light of a clear breach of the rules by Liuzzi.

“For sure I think we deserved this point after all the hard work this year and we finally got it,” said the German.

“It is a great feeling, even if we didn’t get it on the track.

“I think it was the right decision: There was no green flag after this yellow flag from turn one, so we were definitely right and that is why we got this point.”

Source: itv-f1