Louis Di Resta will never forget the day he took his son Paul to meet the headmaster of Bathgate Academy to inquire if he could be taken out of school.
Paul was in third year at secondary but there was a feeling that formal education was getting in the way of a motor racing career which had already gone beyond promising.
Come Sunday evening, Louis hopes that teacher will be able to sit back with the assurance that the decision he made was the correct one. Victory at Hockenheim will give the 22-year-old, fresh from his second F1 test with McLaren/Mercedes, the German Touring Car (DTM) championship and further endorse his reputation as Scotland's Lewis Hamilton in waiting.
"We got Paul private tuition and he did exams in fourth year like everyone else, but I can remember the headmaster saying that he would learn more about the world in one year of doing what he was doing in an international sense than keeping him in school," said Di Resta Sr. "I hope he can look back now and see the decision he made was right. I think he could see in Paul's temperament that he was very serious."
Di Resta's seriousness has never been doubted. From sitting in his first go-kart aged three, the dream of Grand Prix racing soon overtook him. If he overcomes Audi driver Timo Scheider's two-point gap this weekend in Germany, his cv will stand comparison to the best of his generation.
Di Resta beat Hamilton in karts and pipped Sebastian Vettel to the F3 Euroseries title (also won by Hamilton). The biggest difference between the Scot and those two F1 drivers is that he has done it without their huge financial backing.
"The only thing Lewis did which was different to Paul was that he spent one more year in karts and, when he won the European Championship, he did it in a two-man team with Nico Rosberg and a budget of half a million. We did it on £20,000 for the whole year," recalled Louis.
"Paul knows how to dig deep. McLaren spent as much money in 12 months of GP2 racing as we have spent on Paul's entire career from the age of eight. That is a fact. Fathers always want to think of their sons as the best, I know, but if you cut through that, Paul has been champion, champion, champion at every level."
Scotland has excelled in producing top drivers. Di Resta's cousin Dario Franchitti is an Indy500 winner, Allan McNish won Le Mans again this year and David Coulthard will retire from F1 after Brazil as the biggest British pointscorer in the championship's history. And don't forget earlier stars such as Jim Clark and Jackie Stewart. With Ron Dennis, the McLaren team principal, already complimentary about Di Resta, hopes are growing that he could join that exalted company.
"I returned to karting myself in 1994, the year Paul started out," recalled Louis. "He began in April and, by July, I knew I had to give up and focus on him because he had so much promise. In Scotland, there has been a big gap. Dario, Allan and David are all of one era, but since then there has been nothing. I think Paul is going to fill that gap. Interestingly, he did more in karting than any of them."
Di Resta has kept a level head and his own counsel. After his first McLaren outing, he was drafted in to do a runway test; a few days later, he was called by the team. "Seven or eight of them had commented on what a nice kid he was, polite and getting on with everyone. That's Paul, he doesn't have the massive ego thing. He just does the job."
Louis will be hoping Sunday is no different. And after that, Formula One? "I certainly hope so," he smiles.
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