Paul di Resta says Force India pushing hard to stay ahead of F1 giants McLaren

Paul di Resta

Paul di Resta is confident that Force India will remain ahead of the F1 powerhouse McLaren for the upcoming Chinese GP at the next weekend, although he admits maintaining momentum thereafter will be tough.

The Vijay Mallya owned team proved the quickest of the mid-table teams in the earlier GPs and although they suffered huge setback in Malyasia, owing to their first double retirement in two seasons due to wheelnut issues at the pitstops, they head into next week’s Chinese GP with an aim to consolidate fifth position in the Constructors’ Championship.

Force India are in a strong position if you look at the current position of former World Champions, McLaren, who are lagging two places and six points, although they improved considerably with their troublesome car MP4-28 at the second race in Sepang, Malaysia.

With the respective teams using the current break between races to bring further changes to their car with the aim of improving the car performance, di Resta admits it will be tougher for the smaller Force India operation to keep their bigger rival at bay for long.

di Resta said: “We’ve proven where we are at the moment, but whether we will be in that position after the next two will be hard.”

“I’ve a lot of respect for what McLaren do. Although they are struggling at the moment, they can develop.

“But we will be pushing to stay in front of them. Our performance so far has been far better than people expected, far better than people could probably overhaul in two weeks.”

Force India has had mixed experienced so far in China as they produced one of their least competitive performance there last year, while the the year before di Resta qualified in commendable eighth place.

Now ahead of the race at the Shanghai circuit, the young Scot is hopeful of a top-ten result this time around as well.

“Despite what happened in Malaysia, we took very good positives from the weekend through our performance, so I’m looking forward to China and Bahrain,” he added.

“I’d like to think we’d have some more knowledge on our car to make it quicker, although China is a different philosophy compared to what we have experienced so far this season.

“But we had a good car there two years ago, and there is no reason why we can’t go there and repeat that.”