It's nuts for Di Restaposted in F124 | 03 | 2013

    ANY HOPES PAUL DI RESTA had of building on his excellent start to the new Formula One season unwound in Malaysia when his car suffered wheelnut problems.

    The 26-year-old from Bathgate was forced to retire his Sahara Force India car on lap 24 of the scheduled 56 laps of the Sepang circuit.

    Five laps later, his car was joined in the garage by that of his team-mate, Adrian Sutil's. Both cars suffered the same issue.

    "During the pitstops we had a catastrophic failure of the new wheelnuts we're using on both cars," team principal & managing director, Dr Vijay Mallya explained.

    "As a precaution we were forced to retire both cars and will have a full investigation.

    "It’s frustrating, but sometimes these things happen in racing. We will take the positives of the strong car performance and look to put things right next time out in China.”

    It was a sentiment echoed by Di Resta.

    “Essentially the big thing is we missed probably our biggest opportunity as a team," the Scot said, "especially given our performance over the whole weekend.

    "It’s frustrating to come away with nothing, given how competitive we have looked all weekend," the Scot said.

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    "We saw an issue at my team-mate Adrian's first pitstop when I was sat behind him, which cost me 23 seconds.

    "Back on track, the car was handling brilliantly and at one stage I was the fastest car on the track.

    "And having rejoined 18th after the pitstop, by lap 19 I was up to 11th having passed Adrian and opened a sizeable gap over him.

    "Our big problem though surfaced when I made my second pitstop on lap 21. It was obvious immediately that the guys handling the front-left tyre were having problems.

    "It's one of the most frustrating things as a driver when all you can do is sit in the cockpit and know the seconds are ticking away.

    "It's important to remain calm and focused, but it was clear we had a major problem with the wheelnut. I lost track of how long I was in the pits, but it was well over a minute.

    "Eventually I was released to race again, but after a couple of laps I got the message on the radio that I had to come in and retire the car.

    "The good news is we have the performance in the car, but this is definitely a missed opportunity because we had the potential to score a lot of points today.

    "We will go away, take this on the chin, and come back fighting in China.”

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    Jim McGill

     

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