Paul di Resta

Just realised we don't have a thread on the young Scot and there's something I have to get off my chest but, first, here's some history.

A real sporting family, his cousins are the Franchitti brothers and his step father was Scottish footballer Dougie McCracken (no, I'd never heard of him either but he played for Ayr, Dunbarton and East Fife). As ever, started in karting before moving to Formula Renault with Manor Motorsport. He was Formula 3 Euroseries champion in 2006 before moving on to DTM.

With Mercedes backing he was lined up for a drive with Force India in 2009 but FI chose to continue with their '08 driver line up. As test driver in 2010 for FI di Resta finally secured a seat for the 2011 season alongside Adrian Sutil scoring points on his debut and having a highest finish to date of 7th in Hungary.

Anyway, as to my moan. At the pre-race interviews at Spa di Resta complained that he only qualified 18th as the team called him in telling him he was "safe" to get into Q2. Can someone explain why the drivers don't argue with their teams in these situations? He must have seen the track was drying and the grip improving so why doesn't he "grow a pair" and tell them he wants to carry on? It's all too easy to abdicate responsibilty, you're in the car mate, tell them what you think.

And relax...
 
Jan Magnussen had only one full season in F1 and scored only 1 point I'll grant you Fisichella had 3 wins but one of them was because Alonso crashed in the final turn in Brazil and the race was stopped early and the result was taken from the previous full racing lap...

But I take your point that is three more wins than most....
 
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Fisi's first two wins were incredibly fortunate - the Alonso-full-speed-through-Safety-Car-zone incident in 2003 at Interlagos and the single lap qualifying sudden rainstorm in Melbourne in 2005 were both chances in a million, but...
  1. How did he get that Jordan anywhere near the front? (Well, pit strategy, but still...)
  2. He was quite unfortunate to lose out to Raikkonen-round-the-outside-at-La-Source-again in Spa in 2009.
 
Something like 800.
It's more than 800 and less than 900 I have the exact figures somewhere in the research I am doing on various F1 stats I have not done any work on them for a while but will be picking up the task again soon but I can tell you that out of those more than 800 drivers 336 of them drove in F1 in the first decade alone this is due to the indy 500 being classed as an F1 event....
 
RasputinLives I think Di Resta burnt a few bridges along the way by stating he deserves an F1 drive and found there were no takers when the opportunities came

He has not got Nortbert Haug to support him anymore and Toto has other drivers ahead of him


He does deserve an F1 seat more than a few pay drivers on the grid but at his age 28.. it is very difficult to see who outside the top teams will give him a chance
 
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