Di Resta Hoping for Better Prospects in China

Force India’s Paul Di Resta is hoping for better prospects in the next round of the 2013 Formula 1 World Championship in China after retiring from last weekends Malaysian Grand Prix.

(c) Force India F1 Team

The Scot qualified poorly but made his way swiftly through the field, before the Silverstone based team decided to “stack” their cars in the first pit stop. The stop was to change from intermediate to dry tyres but a problem with the wheel nut on Sutil’s car meant Di Resta was delayed.

The wheel nut issue continued in Di Resta and Sutil’s second stops and the team decided to retire the cars on safety grounds after concerns over whether the wheel nuts were properly secure.

At the time of his second stop the 26-year-old had carved his way past team-mate Sutil and various other cars to sit 11^th. The car definitely had the speed but the newly introduced wheel nut design proved to be the team’s downfall.

With the prospect of both cars having the pace to finish in the top 10 Di Resta took away some positives from the weekend. He said “the wheel nut issue was something that did not show up all weekend, but it hurt us quite badly.

“We did a whole winter’s testing with the new nit and nothing showed up, so why here? Maybe the heat, I guess the design office is going to be busy now.”

He added “I was probably looking at seventh place, without the first stop in which I lost all that time, so what happened is pretty frustrating given how quick we were over the weekend.

“At least wheel nits can be fixed for China whereas performance can’t be fixed that quickly, and performance was a big highlight of what we achieved over the weekend.”

Team Owner Vijay Mallya was understandably disappointed by the rather freak issue. He said after the race “it was really looking good until the wheel nit failed, and this is the new wheel nut we have on the car for 2013.

“it is something, with all the delicate equipment on board a Formula One car you would not expect on otherwise robust part like a wheel nut to collapse on you.

“Some things happen in racing,” he added, before wondering what caused the problem. “It could have been the heat; it could have been loading because the problem was with the left-hand side wheel nut.”

Whatever it was, it created a catastrophic loss of points for the midfield squad. “But whatever it was compromised the race completely and I had to retire both the cars” added Mallya.

“It’s one of those things and one of those days when luck was not on our side.”

The retirement was the teams first double DNF since Japan 2010.