Di Resta: We're on the upposted in F119 | 02 | 2011
BATHGATE'S PAUL DI RESTA survived a mighty scare when the throttle on his Force India VJM04 stuck during today's Formula One test at Barcelona. But the 24-year-old Scot, whose day ended with him stuck in the gravel at Turn 1, knows there's far more to come from his team.
"Yes, we've had a few problems, but I think it is definitely better to get it out of the way at this point of the year, as opposed to coming at Bahrain," stated Di Resta, who at one stage of the day had been third-fastest but ended up ninth as he sat out the final 90-minutes of the day, annoyingly as the track reached its fastest.
"It's been difficult at times, but we're improving. Realistically, we know where we are. Because we've had so limited running on this car we're not looking at timesheets, it's just about gathering the data and sending it back for the guys to analyse.
"Day by day it is getting better and the improvement we made from doing the short blasts we did in the last hour yesterday to this morning was quite big and I'm sure you could make that step easily again.
"Certainly, even at the end of the day, the improvement we made from just before lunch to the beginning of the afternoon session was big again.
"We're on the up and I think that's the important thing. I'm sure Adrian (Sutil), who is sheduled to take over the testing tomorrow, will now take over and you'll see the performance certainly rise from there again."
And the Scot, who completed 80 laps of the 2.9-mile Circuit de Catalunya track before the technical failure on his car, was upbeat about where his team lies in performance comparisons with other outfits
"I think we can reference off other teams and I think we were quite reasonable in our performance today," he continued. "We were having quite a reasonable day until about three o'clock when a throttle sensor failed, but I think certainly there were a number of significant and positive points today.
"It's difficult to predict exactly what the performance differences are. I mean, I did a long run behind the Red Bull in the afternoon, and it was quite comparable. I know where we were and you can only gauge where you think they are. It's all on tyre age; it's something we can all certainly sit down and look at.
"Jenson (Button) also did a run at the same time, so there were three of us on track that you could gauge. It was all pretty nip and tuck, but definitely Red Bull seem in good shape. There are some teams that are showing well, but it's difficult — you can't get too carried away until you get to Bahrain because you just have no idea of your true performance until that point."
And the talented young Scot who, remember, is only attending his third full F1 test as a race driver — admitted Force India still has some work to do with in the set-up area.
"Definitely we need to get into the finer details," he said. "It's not necessarily always going forward, you need to try things that might make you take a step back just to understand a bit more; that's we did today.
"The fine-tuning I'm sure will come at the next test and that's what you do over the grand prix weekend. We need to get the big stuff and the reliability of the car running first before you can do that, and also understanding the tyre a bit more. But we're certainly making significant progress."
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Jim McGill