Paul di Resta: A productive weekend in Australia

You only get one chance to make a first impression, and for any racing driver a debut Grand Prix start is a huge landmark in his career.

In Australia Paul di Resta put in a faultless performance for Force India all weekend, and while the exclusion of the two Saubers ultimately helped him into the points in 10th place, no one can take away the fact that he did a great job.

Paul now joins the exclusive group of drivers who have scored points in their first Grand Prix – one that includes his legendary fellow Scots and past World Champions Jim Clark and Jackie Stewart.

Having learned the track on Friday last year Paul didn’t suffer too much by sitting out the first practice session while his car was driven by Nico Hülkenberg. After taking over, he was 16th fastest in FP2, and then 14th in FP3 on Saturday morning.

His first qualifying session was always going to be a big challenge, and he ended it in 14th place. Given that the team knew that the opening three flyaway races were always going to tough before updates arrive for Europe, it was a solid start.

The first lap is always fraught in Australia. Paul made a good first F1 start, kept out of trouble, and moved up to 10th place by the end of the lap, behind the Ferrari of Fernando Alonso.

“I didn’t really gain from other people’s problems,” he says. “I just got a very good start, got into the right position at the first corner, and then managed to make a few places down to Turn 3. After there it was all pretty quiet!

“And then I think it just showed our true performance. Our pace wasn’t quite there to match the others, and they were a bit quicker than us. We went option, option, prime (tyres). The sets were pretty evenly matched. There was not much degradation on the softs, and it looks like one stop (strategy) was probably the way to go.”

Paul crossed the finish line in 12th place, but was delighted to subsequently move up two spots after the Sauber cars were excluded on breach of technical regulations for their rear wing. Given that he had held that position in his own right early in the race, he has good reason to be proud of the result.

“I think it was quite a productive weekend,” says Paul. “We knew that we were going to struggle a little on performance, and that we weren’t quite going to be on the top at the beginning of the year, but I think we’ve shown that we were more competitive than what we believed.

“We were certainly racing. We were up to 10th at one point, which was a good start. We’ve just got to get as much as we can out of the next two races before going into the European season, when we’ll have some new parts for performance.”