PAUL Di Resta suffered a bitter blow last night when he was ordered to start this afternoon's British Grand Prix at Silverstone from the back of the grid.
The Force India driver had earlier achieved the best qualifying result of his Formula One career, setting the fifth-fastest time of the day with a lap of 1min 30.736secs.
But post-qualifying testing showed the car to be underweight at 1.5kg below the minimum requirement of 642kg.
FIA technical delegate Jo Bauer discovered the discrepancy and immediately referred the matter to the stewards.
The weight of the car and its driver count together and Force India said later that the problem lay with Di Resta rather than the vehicle.
They said the car was weighed after final practice and again after qualifying, producing identical results.
It was then discovered that Di Resta was mysteriously 1.5kgs lighter after qualifying as opposed to final practice. Force India director Bob Fernley said that when the Scot was weighed again later he was back to his normal weight.
The team considered racing under appeal, but the Silverstone-based marque eventually decided to accept the stewards' decision.
Di Resta, 27, from Bathgate, had said immediately after qualifying: "We've known all season that we have good, raw pace in both qualifying and race trim and we showed that again today.
"After Monaco and Canada, where qualifying didn't go exactly as we'd planned, today everything went perfectly and I have to give the guys in the garage and on the pitwall a big thanks.
"Silverstone's a track I've always loved and it's a circuit which I believe suits our car. I think we showed that again today too. This track takes a lot of commitment and you need to build up your speed but I think we saved our best till last — and that's when it mattered."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article