23 Sep 2012

Having finished Friday practice in sixth place, Paul Di Resta was able to maintain his form into qualifying in Singapore, overcoming a difficult FP3 session to claim sixth on the grid. Here are his thoughts on qualifying and Sunday’s race.

You must be happy with sixth place?
“We are definitely happy with that. Alarm bells were ringing a bit in FP3 – we had quite a good car yesterday, and struggled quite badly in FP3 on every run. Fundamentally something wasn’t right, although we hadn’t changed much. Going back to the baseline set-up for qualifying dramatically improved it, and put us a step in front again. We were able to regain our confidence and improve each time we went on track. I saved the best lap for the end, which was good. I always found little bits as the track improved.”

Any thoughts on the race?
“It’s a street track and you need to get yourself in a good position, hopefully out of the trouble. Having said that, anything can happen! I think we’ve put ourselves in a good position to score some points. We have been a bit stronger than Mercedes this week in general, up until now. Whether that will carry on is another thing. They chose not to run [in Q3], but I think we’ve got a good enough car to be able to stay in front of them.”

The circuit is known for its safety cars. How do you prepare for that scenario?
“It will either be for you or against you and I just hope it won’t mess up our strategy. I think it just depends when it comes out and what strategy the people round about you are on, whether they are going to do the same as you. We didn’t seem too bad in terms of tyre degradation and long run performance yesterday. I would say it’s slightly improved compared to where it has been in recent races.”

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