26 Oct 2012

Paul Di Resta finished FP2 for Sahara Force India at Buddh International Circuit today in 11^th place, having been 12^th in the morning session. Paul didn’t have an entirely trouble-free afternoon session, so the 0.7s time gap to Nico Hülkenberg in eighth does not show the true picture. We asked him for his thoughts on the day.

The track is always very ‘green’ on the first day. How difficult was it at the start?
“There was quite a big track improvement. It started off quite slippery, but I think that’s just the cleaning process as nothing has run here. The track is in a reasonable condition so you can get an idea of where you are.”

There’s a big time gap to Nico – what problems did you have?
“I got a lot of traffic and was heavily compromised and we had to stop because we had a puncture on my short run. So it’s not representative and I didn’t really get a long run at the end. The only thing we can take is that on the first two runs I was quicker than Nico.”

So what have you learned today?
“Not as much as we’d hoped! I think we’ve got a little bit of work to do, but I think we’ve got some direction of where we can work towards. We’ve still got a lot to get out of the car.”

Nico was in the top 10 today. Can the car make Q3 here?
“I think it might be a bit more difficult here. I don’t think we’ve started as well as we could have, for whatever reason. But we can make amends overnight and get a better direction tomorrow.”

You have been in India for a few days already. How big a weekend is this for the team?
“It’s an important market for us, as the team name suggests! You have to come out here and see your partners and help to build awareness for F1, because these are the people that are making it happen for us.”

Finally, is it still possible to beat Sauber in the constructors’ championship?
“If we had  just a bit more consistency and mechanical reliability we would have been closer and pressuring them more, but there’s no reason we can’t still do that. At the end of the day they’ve have a bit better year than us, but there’s no reason why we can’t turn it around, and we’ll keep fighting until it’s over.”

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