Through all the rumours and the matter of the World Driver's Championship, there are many different aspects to Formula One. Sometimes, I find that the media focus so heavily on the latest rumour linking Kimi Raikkonen to Ferrari or how Lewis Hamilton is now seemingly in the hunt for the 2013 World Title, that we forget about the other talented drivers which we encounter at every race, but do not necessarily receive the attention they should.
The media is quick to notice when someone performs extraordinarily well or when someone falls short of expectation or when they become outspoken, but no driver is given the nod when they are doing well within their team and is quietly getting on with the business in hand. There are so many underrated drivers on the grid at the moment and I believe one of these to be Paul Di Resta. Although he has captured the media's attention over the past couple of races due to his allegations against his team, prior to this I found that there was not much focus on the young Scot.
Already in his third season competing with Sahara Force India, it seems as though Paul is ready to show everybody exactly how talented he really is. Many people may not know that he beat Sebastian Vettel whilst competing and winning his Formula Three title and this is one indication of his speed and talent. I've noticed recently many people criticise Paul and his performances, suggesting that he perhaps isn't good enough. This baffles me somewhat as it makes me wonder if they can see the same thing as me when I'm watching the tv. The important thing to remember here is that he isn't driving the fastest car with the most downforce yet he is still managing to regularly score points in races and qualify within the top 10 (prior to recent qualy problems.) Clearly the car he is driving at the moment isn't capable of winning races or podium finishes because there are teams such as Red Bull, Lotus and Mercedes which are much faster. Di Resta is capable of overtaking, racing other drivers hard and fairly, and is rarely involved in accidents or incidents with other drivers.
One side of Paul that we've seen more of this season is when things start to go wrong. For three consecutive races from Monaco to the British GP and even in Hungary, Di Resta has qualified towards the lower end of the grid, for various reasons.
In Monaco he qualified in 17th place due to the team failing to put on a new set of intermediate tyres in time for him to set a time at the end of the session when times were tumbling, similar to the way that the team didn't manage to get him out in time during qualy in Canada at the next race, resulting him starting the race from a familiar 17th. For these errors Paul blamed the team, but faced criticism for being quick to blame them. Personally, I do not feel as though he did anything particularly wrong here, he was obviously frustrated as he knew what the car was capable and it was clearly better than the 17th place it qualified. After it happened twice in as many races, it's no surprise that he was disappointed and I'm glad he felt as though he could be honest about his feelings at the time. Formula One is a team sport, and so the team should rightfully accept some of the blame for the situations although on the flipside of that some would argue that Paul so accept some responsibility too. Maybe he should.
One of the most impressive moments of the season was when Di Resta qualified in 5th place for the British GP. However I cannot imagine his frustration when he was later disqualified from qualy and made to start from the back of the grid for being 1KG underweight. Nevertheless, it was still an amazing effort from the driver, and even more amazing to learn that even with the added kilo, he still would have qualified in that position. He really outperformed the car that afternoon and fought back the next afternoon coming from 22nd to 9th to score 2 points at his home race.
As it stands Di Resta is currently 10th in the WDC standings, after 10 races. He has 36 points, a career best and has scored more points in the first half of the 2013 season than for the total of the 2012 or 2011 seasons. More importantly, he is consistently beating his team-ate Adrian Sutil, who is no F1 rookie, and this shows in the current 13 point difference between the two drivers. Paul is constantly improving, and surely deserves his chance at a bigger team with a more competitive car that is capable of competing for championships.
With still 9 races to go in this season, although Di Resta is very unlikely to win the WDC, he is historically stronger in the second half of the season and this provides an exciting feeling for the rest of the season. Along with all the other drama that constantly surrounds F1, you're going to want to be watching the Belgium GP weekend, starting on on 23rd August, with the race on the 25th.
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