MARCH 23, 2010

Force India to run Di Resta in first practice

Force India has announced that the team's reserve driver Paul di Resta will replace Adrian Sutil in the first practice session at the Australian Grand Prix.

Force India has announced that the team's reserve driver Paul di Resta will replace Adrian Sutil in the first practice session at the Australian Grand Prix in order for him to gain more experience in the car.

Paul di Resta commented: "I am excited, for sure. Given the pace of the car in Bahrain it's a great opportunity for me at this stage. I've never been to Melbourne but I'll walk the track with the engineers on the Wednesday ahead of the race and work with them to be able to do some useful work during the session. At the end of the day I'm not going to come out and try and set fastest times - it's about feeding my information back into the race schedule, helping the team and learning as much as I can. If I set a good time, great, but we need to approach this as a team as well and work through our programme. I've been in the simulator, tried to learn the Albert Park layout and I've looked over all the information from Bahrain so I feel as prepared as I can be at this stage. I feel ready and can't wait to get started; it's a great opportunity."

Team Principal, Dr. Vijay Mallya said, "Paul is a very good driver and has a lot of potential. But as a third driver the question is how he can use this potential if there's no testing in-season. This is a good solution all round, he can learn the car and the tracks in real time and therefore spend his simulator time helping to develop the car, which will be of real benefit to us. The race drivers are very supportive of the move - they've all been young drivers one time!"