09 Jun 2012

Paul Di Resta: “We’ve had a productive day”

The Sahara Force India team had a good first day in Canada, as both drivers figured strongly in the top 10. Nico Hülkenberg and Paul Di Resta were sixth and 11^th in the morning session, while Paul was an encouraging fifth in the afternoon, with Nico three spots behind. Although there’s a long way to go this weekend, it was a promising start. Paul gave us the lowdown on his day and prospects for Saturday.

Was that a good day at the office?
“I wouldn’t get carried away yet! We’ve had a productive day, I think we got through everything and got our tyre data. The weather was obviously better than predicted. We’ve worked our way through and gone forward, which is a good thing. Hopefully the track will come a bit more to us. Ambient conditions are going to change overnight, so it’s how much you want to react to that. We go away feeling relatively comfortable, hopefully we’ll come back tomorrow and certainly Q3 is a realistic target, should we do a good job.”

What are the key elements that have changed this weekend to give you this performance?
“Canada is obviously a bit different – you come with a different package. Our car has naturally suited this track better in the past. It’s difficult to say what’s happening up and down the pit lane, because people use tyres at different points. But on both compounds we seemed relatively competitive, so we’ll see where we are after FP3. I’m not silly enough to say where this year’s going, and some people might struggle today and they’ll be quicker tomorrow. We could easily be a bit quicker tomorrow when the conditions change. We’ll work hard and try and achieve something better than what we had today.”

Traditionally this is a circuit known for quite a lot of tyre stops, but some people are saying that might not be the case this year.
“But traditionally you’re not running round when there’s 22 degrees track temperature here! It is known for high tyre degradation. It’s unfair to say because Pirelli didn’t get true tyre data last year, because we had a wet race. So it’s relatively unknown, I think that’s what makes this race quite exciting this year, because there’s no past data to say how the race is going to go. And as I say, the temperatures are going to rise quite a bit.”

Would you say this was the best Friday session so far this year?
“Obviously Bahrain was the best Friday we had, because it gave us the best outcome on a race day! It’s too early to say: you don’t know what people were doing, and people had different approaches today. We’ll go away relatively comfortable, but tomorrow we certainly won’t be sitting still. We certainly need to make the car better, because we should aim as high as we can.”

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