Radar punt robs Di Restaposted in F123 | 03 | 2013
AN ILL-JUDGED CALL by the team, caused by a its weather radar breaking, wrecked Paul di Resta's qualifying for the Malaysian Grand Prix. The 26-year-old starts tomorrow's race from a frustrating 15th on the grid.
Di Resta, who had impressed in the build-up to today's qualifying session, cruising through to Q2, was first on-track for the second session.
For some unexplained reason, and with rain imminent, the team immediately called him back into the bits before he'd been able to cross the finish line and register an early banker lap.
By the time the team released him back on to the rack later in the session, the rain had arrived and, naturally, he wasn't able to get anywhere close to the times of the top 10.
After initially saying "we had the weather about five minutes further away on the radar", the team's deputy principal Robert Fernley admitted it's radars had actually failed.
"Unfortunately, we had the weather about five minutes further away on the radar, which would have allowed us to do the run we wanted to do with Paul," he explained.
"Paul got caught out, and unfortunately there was nothing we could do for him. Paul's race will be more challenging.
"The radars all failed: we should have known better."
The unanswered questions though remain:
Why did the team not ensure he completed his early banker run?
Why send him out early if the intention was not to complete the early run?
And, perhaps most significantly:
Why, when the team and the whole paddock knew rain was imminent risk not getting the early time in, especially when they knew their weather radar was not working?
Two race weekends into the new season, and already, both in Melbourne and now Kuala Lumpar, the team appears to have let Di Resta down.
Last week it ordered him to stay behind team-mate Adrian Sutil in the closing stages, despite the Scot being significantly faster in a frustrating eighth place.
Today the team wrecks his qualifying session through a call which should never have been made. Knowing the weather was about to change, any intelligent F1 fan could have have told the team: "Get an early banker lap in!"
Di Resta, naturally, was disappointed with events.
"The team knew this rain was coming in, and essentially it was their call: they called me in," he stated. "We obviously got that wrong. We've got it wrong on the pitfall.
"I'm sure they'll stick their hand up to it: they were only trying to do the best job, but it's frustrating.
"We've tried to make a clever call and I think it's bitten us. I think we should have continued the lap we were on at the beginning.
"We chose to abort, and unfortunately on the outlap it started raining.
"It's disappointing, because after such a strong weekend, we've now got an awful lot of work to do.
"But on the positive side, we have a strong car and I think that's what's going to be key to getting us through.
"We also have four sets of fresh rubber, so that will definitely help. We won't give up without a fight.
"We're all out here to do the same thing, which is to be quick. Up until this point this weekend, everybody's been at the top of their performance level. We'll keep plugging away and we'll be constructive about it.
"It's a bit of a mess-up all round, but we'll come back fighting tomorrow."
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Jim McGill