• Australian Grand Prix

Di Resta 'robbed' of seventh place

Paul di Resta finished the race just behind team-mate Adrian Sutil © Sutton Images

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• Race:
• Australian Grand Prix

• Drivers:
• Paul di Resta

• Teams:
• Racing Point

Paul di Resta believes he was "slightly robbed" of seventh place in the Australian Grand Prix.

Having started ninth, di Resta went for a two stop strategy but said he got stuck behind Jenson Button for too long to make the plan work effectively. Having also closed on team-mate Adrian Sutil late in the race di Resta alluded to the team requesting its drivers to hold position in the final few laps.

"I suppose we achieved the objective of getting in to Q3 and that was the target all through the winter and that's essentially what you work for," di Resta said. "Slightly robbed probably of seventh place at the end there; we definitely had the speed but the strategy obviously didn't play out with the three-stoppers just getting in my way.

"I got stuck behind Jenson, which is a bit of a good thing to say you got stuck behind a McLaren at some points in the grand prix but we essentially lost 13, 14 laps, grained the front tyre and that affected the middle stint. Obviously came on very strong at the end but we took the points for the team; the overall picture I suppose is very important for us over the year."

Looking ahead to next weekend's race in Malaysia, di Resta believes Force India is well placed to exceed today's performance.

"It was a good performance from the team, don't get me wrong, but the nice thing is we're coming away and there's definitely things we can fix to improve the car. We highlighted a few things but already it looks like we've seemed to carry over from last year that our performance on tyre life seems good. When you're going to a high-deg track like Malaysia and China coming up next we've just got a little thing to click and hopefully we can go aggressive on the next couple because this is the point of the year where we lost it on previous years. But if we can just get that uplift now, what we have done, we can go forward with it."

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.