Was di Resta's comeback as bad as it looked?

Comebacks are hard. Just ask Paul di Resta.

It certainly wasn't a dream return to the category he once conquered, but don't write him off just yet. Plenty of things conspired against the Scot at Hockenheim, and while the results aren't flattering, he actually did a reasonably good job against the odds.

For a former DTM champion, it's very easy to look at a 14th-place finish and say that's not good enough.

It would be equally easy to say that he should be quicker than a youngster like Pascal Wehrlein in the same machinery.

But that would be forgetting the very simple fact that making the switch from Formula 1 to the DTM is difficult, even for a guy who has won races and titles there.

On Friday at Hockenheim, Timo Glock - a man who moved from F1 to the DTM 12 months ago - made that very point.

"It's very difficult," he said, when asked how he thought di Resta and Vitaly Petrov would get on this season. "I saw Vitaly in Budapest at the test, and I asked him how he's getting on and he was like, 'F*****g hell, it's difficult, it's not easy'.

"You can look back in the past - everyone who came from F1 struggled."

Just because di Resta raced in the DTM before doesn't make him immune to the same problems that have faced other ex-F1 drivers. His three years in F1 were essentially spent forgetting the driving style that makes you quick in a touring car, and refining the technique required to get the best out of an F1 car.

Now, he has to go back the other way.

Di Resta's first weekend back in the DTM was hard © XPB

The good news is that his DTM experience will help him fast-track that process, but it's not a switch that he - nor anyone, for that matter - can flick and instantly rediscover how to drag a DTM car to the limit.

Di Resta isn't quite starting from scratch, but he's not far off it. It will take time to get back up to speed - not because he's not talented, not because he's not good enough for this series, but because that's how this sport works.

Naturally, given he's won a DTM title, he won't be given the same settling-in period as, say, Petrov. And those heightened expectations don't just come from the fans or the media, they also come from Mercedes. Di Resta has been brought into this team to help them win, and to help them win sooner rather than later.

"He's a great asset to our team, he has already proven he can win a championship," said Mercedes' DTM chief Wolfgang Schattling on Saturday evening at Hockenheim. "We expect a lot from him, and we're happy to have him here."

It's a clear message, and it's fair enough. Di Resta does, after all, know how to win in the DTM. But it's still going to take him a few races to get his head back around these cars.

Even on his comeback weekend, di Resta was almost there. Again, the results don't do his performance any justice, because the margins are so small. In practice he was 18th, but only 1.2s off the best time. In qualifying, he was 0.063s from going into Q2.

We're not talking about significant gaps in performance. Those unwanted tenths come from braking a little late here and there, not being able to rotate the car quite right, and then losing a bit on the following straight. It's so easy to do in a DTM machine, particularly when you're coming from a light, grippy F1 car with incredible braking and turn-in.

And when barely a second covers the whole field, that extra time has a huge impact on your overall position.

What didn't help di Resta at all was that, at the other end of the field, Antonio Felix da Costa made the switch from formula cars to the DTM look relatively easy. But there's no real comparison to be made between their respective weekends. BMW is flying at the moment, and Mercedes is not.

All the Mercedes drivers struggled at Hockenheim © LAT

Given what a shocker Mercedes had, di Resta can really only be compared to his team-mates, and in that respect he had a strong weekend.

In the sessions that mattered, he was the third-best Mercedes driver, behind Wehrlein, who had a stand-out weekend, and Gary Paffett, who is a proven winner with tons of DTM experience.

That he was able to outpace guys like Robert Wickens, Daniel Juncadella and Christian Vietoris, all of whom spent 2013 in DTM cars, is actually very impressive.

Di Resta's mood post-race summed up his weekend perfectly. He wasn't over the moon - few drivers of his calibre would be after finishing 14th - but he wasn't distraught, either.

He spoke like a man who felt he had done the best he could; a man who was satisfied, at the very least, with his own performance.

And so he should be. It wasn't a good weekend for Mercedes, but all things considered, it wasn't a bad weekend for Paul di Resta.