Paul di Resta will get his first chance to drive the VJM03 this weekend in Melbourne.
The Scott signed with Force India earlier this year as a reserve driver and was promised some practice time in the car through Friday practice sessions. True to their word, Force India have given Di Resta one of the Friday sessions to get a feel for the car, whilst collecting data for the team.
He got his first taste of what it’s like to be a driver in Bahrain when he attended his first race as an employee.
“Bahrain was a genuinely interesting experience. I’ve been to F1 races before but always as an observer, I’ve never been so involved in a team.
“A lot of the time was spent attending meetings, speaking with the engineers and learning how the team functions over a race meeting,” Di Resta said.
“I am excited, for sure. Given the pace of the car in Bahrain it’s a great opportunity for me at this stage.”
Having never driven the Albert Park circuit, the only experience Paul has, is in the FI simulator.
“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.
“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.
“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.”
