Paul di Resta said that fourteenth position on the Monaco Grand Prix grid was ‘a fair reflection’ of his Force India team’s pace this weekend.
The Scot out-qualified his more experienced team-mate once again this afternoon and knows that anything could happen come race day in Monte Carlo.
“Once again I think that P14 is a fair reflection of our pace this weekend,” said the Scot. “Everybody knows that qualifying is very important here and so I pushed hard to get as high up the grip as possible, but the race is long and anything can happen tomorrow afternoon. So I'll just try my best to stay out of trouble and try to make some progress with the strategy.
“It's my first weekend racing a Formula One car at Monaco so I've lots to learn but I'm really looking forward to the race tomorrow.”
Adrian Sutil also acknowledged that the cars were lacking in pace today, but suspects he could have qualified higher if circumstances had fallen more favourably.
“It's disappointing that we couldn't fight for Q3, but the pace was not there today,” he said. “I was bit unlucky on my last run in Q2 when Petrov wasn't watching his mirrors and I had to abort one of my flying laps. I did another lap, but my tyres were going off by then and so I probably could have been a little bit higher up.
“For the race tomorrow we know that overtaking is difficult and making the strategy work won't be easy, but we will be ready for any opportunities that come our way.”
Deputy Team Principal Robert Fernley points out that the team were reasonably close to the Q3 pace and emphasised the need to make the most of other’s misfortune in the race tomorrows.
“The qualifying session at Monaco is arguably the most important of the year because we know how hard it is to overtake around here,” he said. “So we went all out today to get both cars as high up the grid as possible and hoping we might squeeze through to Q3. In the end we just missed out, but all the times were incredibly close with just a few tenths making the difference.
“For the race tomorrow we will try and make the strategy work to bring Paul and Adrian into contention. Historically this race has seen quite a high attrition rate and so we need to capitalise on any incidents in the race to move forward and hopefully challenge for points.”
