Sergio Perez will start the US Grand Prix in 12th position on the grid just ahead of teammate Nico Hulkenberg as Sahara Force India's chances to reduce the gap with McLaren look slim since both the drivers of the British side qualified inside the top-10.
Placed sixth in the Team championship, Force India are trailing McLaren by 20 points at 123.
However both the Force India drivers failed to make it to the Q3 with Perez's fastest lap in Q2 coming in at 1:38.554, slightly better than Hulkenberg (1:38.598)
"It has been a difficult weekend so far working with the car balance because the windy conditions have impacted on us quite a lot. The wind was always changing direction, making the car quite unpredictable and making it difficult to be consistent. So it was hard to get the perfect lap together," Perez said.
Hulkenberg said making it to Q3 was "possible".
"On my final lap in Q2 I was on target for the top ten until something really unusual happened because a tear-off visor wrapped itself around my front tyre going into turn twelve," the German said.
"I've never experienced something like that in my career and when I turned into the corner I had no grip, I ran wide and lost a couple of tenths. It was my final Q2 lap so it was quite frustrating and unlucky," he added.
