Paul di Resta says that an upgrade package was the key behind Force India's pace as he finished sixth in the Singapore Grand Prix.
Force India has been strong in recent races, with its worst lowest score in the last five grands prix an eighth place in Italy. In Singapore di Resta made the most of a two-stop strategy to beat Nico Rosberg's Mercedes and secure his best result of the season, and he said that it was the culmination of a lot of hard work by the team.
"I'm very happy with the outcome," di Resta said. "I don't think the safety car really helped us because I still had a lot of life left in the supersoft tyres in the middle of the race, but it didn't really hurt us either. After that it was a case of managing my pace to Rosberg, looking after the tyres and bringing the car home. I was in free air for the final part of the race, which helped, and the pace was strong.
"It's probably my best race of the season, but it's the result of all the hard work behind the scenes. We came here with an upgrade package that has allowed us to gain performance in the race, gain tyre life, and we saw the benefits of that today."
Team-mate Adrian Sutil was eighth as Force India secure its first double points finish since the opening race of the season, and he said it was an important result for the constructors' standings.
"We have been aiming to get both cars in the points for a while now, so we can be very happy with where we finished," Sutil said. "The points we scored give us some breathing space over Sauber in the championship. It was quite a normal race for me, although I lost some track position under the safety car as Rosberg got ahead of me and stayed there until the end of the race. The final stint was quite difficult because I had to do about 30 laps on the soft tyres. I had Perez close behind me and then Massa was closing in fast on the final lap. Fortunately I had enough to hold on to eighth."
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