Di Resta satisfied with recovery to P12 in Valencia qualifying

The Scot will start 12th on the grid for the European Grand Prix, two places behind his team-mate Adrian Sutil, and di Resta said afterwards that he might have gone even quicker but for a mistake on his final flying lap in Q2.

"After the problems we had in free practice, I knew that I would be on the back foot today having only completed three timed laps yesterday," said di Resta. "But we tried our best this morning to get up to speed with the car before qualifying.

"On my final flying lap in Q2 I was on the edge and simply made a small mistake at turn 17 - I missed a downshift and ran wide. That meant I lost the advantage I'd made at the start of the lap. So I will start from P12, which is not too bad considering all that has happened this weekend.

"I'm staying positive and think that we can fight for points from there. The only unknowns are that I haven't done a long run on high fuel and it's difficult to know where to start with the aero balance or when to conserve the tyres. So we will try and make the most of what we know."

Sutil was delighted to have made it in to Q3 for the first time in 2011.

"The car has been working pretty well all weekend and I felt that we had a good chance to make it through to Q3 today," said the German. "But I knew that we would have to get the lap just right. That's why this result feels great because I got the maximum from the car. We didn't go out in Q3 because we felt it was better to save another set of soft tyres for the race.

"Also, we saw in Q2 that Heidfeld was three tenths away and that it would be difficult to improve on P10. So it's a good grid position, but the race is what counts so hopefully we can convert this into points tomorrow."