Di Resta: I'm optimisticposted in F129 | 07 | 2011
McLAREN'S LEWIS HAMILTON, winner at the Nurburgring last weekend, continued to top the timesheets when he was fastest in both free practice sessions at the Hungaroring. But Bathgate's Paul di Resta showed his Force India is on the pace again by finishing ninth as he prepares for his first Hungarian Grand Prix.
The 25-year-old Scot, who finished one place ahead of his more experienced team-mate Adrian Sutil, clocked a best time of 1min 22.835secs, to finish just 1.8s off Hamilton.
And Di Resta (pictured today) believes Force India's radical new new aerodynamic package, which it raced for the first time in Monaco, now means it is competitive even on tracks like the Hungaroring, the second-slowest track on the calendar.
Afterwards, the Scot admitted he was boosted by the team's performance today and is looking forward to both tomorrow's qualifying, and the race itself.
"I'm optimistic we should be able to maintain this form right through the weekend," he said, when quizzed about the possibility of qualifying inside the top 10.
See more photos of Paul in Hungary today
"The car has given us confidence everywhere we go. Last year, we started very strongly and dropped down, but this year we started averagely and the raft of improvements has been incredible."
And Di Resta, whose past few races have been dogged by bad luck which has resulted in him failing to score points, despite his pace and reliability, is hoping for a clean weekend.
In fact, so confident is the F1 rookie that, with the knowledge there's more to come from his Force India VJM04, he's quietly confident he might be able to challenge Mercedes, which was best-of-the-rest behind McLaren, Ferrari and Red Bull in free practice, in qualifying and the race.
"We got through all of our objectives today," he continued. "We did a normal Friday's running and got long runs on both compounds, which was important. We got some valuable data. But there are certainly some places where we can improve."
Hamilton finished the session 0.241s ahead of the Ferrari of Fernando Alonso, with his own McLaren team-mate Jenson Button third. The two Red Bulls of Mark Webber and world championship leader Sebastian Vettel finished fourth and fifth respectively. The German was 0.531s off the pace.
BBC/Sky to split F1 TV coverage in 2012
Keep up-to-date with all the latest bus by following us on twitter.com/scotcars
Craig James