Di Resta looking forward to Melbourne debut

How was Bahrain for you?

Bahrain was a genuinely interesting experience. I’ve been to F1 races before but always as an observer, I’ve never been so involved in a team. A lot of the time was spent attending meetings, speaking with the engineers and learning how the team functions over a race meeting. It’s a professional team and I’ve learnt a lot about how to approach the car, deal with the systems and the procedures and also what the team needs from me in terms of feedback and support. They’ve made me very welcome and I’m looking forward to putting it all into practice when I get my chance in Australia.

It your first time out in free practice in the VJM03 this weekend. What are your thoughts ahead of this?

I am excited, for sure. Given the pace of the car in Bahrain it’s a great opportunity for me at this stage. I’ve never been to Melbourne but I’ll walk the track with the engineers on the Wednesday ahead of the race and work with them to be able to do some useful work during the session. At the end of the day I’m not going to come out and try and set fastest times - it’s about feeding my information back into the race schedule, helping the team and learning as much as I can. If I set a good time, great, but we need to approach this as a team as well and work through our programme.

How have you been preparing for the task ahead?

I’ve been in the simulator, tried to learn the Albert Park layout and I’ve looked over all the information from Bahrain so I feel as prepared as I can be at this stage. As I say when we get to Australia I’ll be walking the track, working with the engineers and then keeping my focus during the practice session. I feel ready and can’t wait to get started; it’s a great opportunity.