F1: Di Resta Impresses With Sixth

Formula 1

F1: Di Resta Impresses With Sixth

Force India driver is optimistic for a good run on Sunday

Adam Cooper | http://www.speedtv.com | Posted September 22, 2012 Marina Bay (SGP)

Paul di Resta of Great Britain and Force India drives during practice for the Singapore Formula One Grand Prix at the Marina Bay Street Circuit. (Photo: Getty Images)

Having qualified fourth in Monza only to be demoted by a gearbox penalty Paul Di Resta followed up with an excellent sixth place in Singapore.

Di Resta had been sixth on Friday but struggled in FP3 on Saturday. However the Force India was much better come qualifying.

“We are definitely happy with that,” said the Scot. “Alarm bells were ringing a bit in FP3 – we left quite a good car yesterday, and struggled quite badly in FP3 on every run. Fundamentally something wasn’t right, although we hadn’t changed much. We’d just changed a few bits on the car for race spec.

“But going back to baseline for qualifying dramatically improved it, and put us a step in front again. We were able to regain our confidence and work our way and improve each time we went on track. I saved the best lap for the end, which was good. I always found little bits as the track improved.”

Di Resta remains optimistic for Sunday.

“It’s obviously a street track, and you need to get yourself in a good position, hopefully out of the trouble. Having said that, anything can happen! I think we’ve put ourselves in a good position to score some points.

“We have been a bit stronger than Mercedes this week in general, up until now. Whether that will carry on is another thing. They chose not to run [in Q3], but I think we’ve got a good enough car to be able to stay in front of them.

“We didn’t seem too bad in terms of tire degradation and long run performance yesterday. I would say it’s slightly improved compared to where it has been in recent races.”

Adam Cooper notched up his 27th season as a racing journalist in 2011. He has written about F1 for SPEED.com since 2005. Follow him on Twitter.