Barcelona: Paul di Resta added six more points to Sahara Force India's kitty with a seventh-place finish at the Spanish Grand Prix of the Formula One Championship, while team-mate Adrian Sutil finished 13th here on Sunday.
Starting from 10th place on the grid, the Scot raced brilliantly as he had an exciting tussle with pole sitter Nico Roseberg for the sixth place but eventually settled for seventh. He had moved up to fifth at one stage while Sutil did well to not go down from his grid position after beginning the race at the 13th position.
Force India (32) are now leading McLaren (29) by three points in the fifth place. The British side was just one point behind Force India before this race. Di Resta did well to finish ahead of Lewis Hamilton of McLaren, helping the side to increase the gap, though marginally.
"We said before the race that seventh would be a good result and towards the end I was even fighting for sixth. So we can take a lot of positives from the weekend because this is a track that has traditionally not suited our car. It was a great effort by the team to get through to Q3 yesterday and come away with a seventh place today," Di Resta said.
"The result shows the consistency that we have had since the start of the year and that we can perform each weekend. There's more to come too, because there is more we can do to optimise the car with the new parts we introduced here, but this is definitely a big result for us."
Di Resta's team-mate Sutil, however, was disappointed with his result.
"It's extremely disappointing to come away empty handed from this race because we were so quick today. My start was very good and I went around the outside of the first corner, which worked well because I was up in eighth by the end of the first lap," the German said. It was all going to plan until the first pit stop when there was an issue and I lost so much time. The team told me to switch the engine off while they sorted the problem, but it cost me the chance of points. For the rest of the race it was a case of pushing as much as possible because you never know what can happen. It's frustrating, but you have to accept these things. Hopefully it will not happen again," he added.
Sahara Force India's Deputy Team Principal, Robert Fernley said: "It's rewarding to come away with another seventh place for Paul and maintain our fifth place in the championship. Paul drove a very strong race and the calls from the pit wall kept him in the battle for sixth with Rosberg right until the last lap.
"On the other side of the garage there was bad luck for Adrian, who lost a considerable amount of time during his first pit stop when the right rear wheel nut cross-threaded.
It was very unfortunate because he had an amazing start, moving up five places on the opening lap. His race pace was very impressive once again and he would surely have scored well today."
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