Overall the Scot is a real hardened racing driver, something lacking in today's modern times. He pushes the car hard when he's given the opportunity and when the current formula is all about tyre management, he is considered one of the best when it comes to looking after the rubber.
His stand out performance has to have been Bahrain where he came incredibly close to securing a maiden podium, only to be ousted by Lotus's Romain Grosjean in a thrilling scrap. It just goes to show, the pace is there and the ability is constantly on show. But the one element letting him down and possibly the biggest component is the support of his team.
I'm not talking about lack of support like the kind Mark Webber and Felipe Massa have, I'm talking more along the lines for fortune and decent management. Di Resta has been let down massively by the team.
In Monaco, the team opted to stay out on inters after Paul had put in some front running lap times, a decision which cost di Resta to bow out in Q1 as low down as P17, somewhere were no driver wants to be. di Resta blamed it on poor decision making and called for the procedures to be cleaned up in order to prevent such mistakes from happening again. How did the Scot respond? By pulling major overtaking manoeuvres in places where no man thought possible.It was every other lap where he was taking someone on the outside of turn 1 which eventually lead him to secure P9 and 2 points for himself. Imagine what he could have done if his team had been on the ball.
You would then expect a team to go out and improve qualifying performance, but oh no. Someone clearly let monkey loose in the Force India garage after the team decided to alter a gearbox setting in Paul's car in the Canadian GP. This meant he missed optimum track performance and once again he missed the Q2 cut. The angry driver described the latest blunder as "unacceptable" and publicly blasted his team.
Rightly so, it's not on to make these mistakes back to back when you're racing in the pinnacle of motorsport, idiots who make these decisions need to be sat down and educated on what their blunders are doing to the team. Nevertheless, di Resta soldiered on to finish in 7th place, a master drive from a master-class driver.
Bizarrely, Paul was disqualified from qualifying at the British GP despite qualifying 9th. It was found that the Force India car was 1.5kg lighter than it should have been. It still remains a mystery whether Paul had some disastrous dinner the night before, resulting in him dropping a load of weight in the toilet, or if the team had made a blunder. Once again, he came back and finished in the points.
Qualifying still haunts di Resta and it is a real shame considering the potential of the car at the start of the season. Hopefully when he comes back he finds some magic and starts scoring big numbers.
On the bigger picture, he seems needs to be getting noticed. Already on the Ferrari and Red Bull shortlists, opportunities could also present themselves at Lotus and McLaren too. Paul has been very very good to Force India and this year they haven't really treated him the way he deserves. It's time he got into a race winning car soon and I believe his time is coming soon.
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