Di Resta rules out shock Monaco result

With a high chance that Pirelli's super soft tyres will deliver an unpredictable event, there is talk that there could be some surprise names on the podium at the end of the race.

Di Resta says he is not letting himself dream of such a shock though - and thinks that if he can come away from Monaco with points that would be a good enough result.

When asked if he was pondering his chances of a shock podium, di Resta said: "That is a bit unrealistic, but if we came away from here having scored points then we would be delighted.

"We've been close to getting into Q3 on a number of occasions this year, and we've got into it once.

"I suppose you have to have the same approach here to make that happen. Again the mechanical set-up can have a big influence on how committed you are and how quickly I can get up to speed.

"There are a few variations, but I think we'll have the same approach, with qualifying the key which will free up race strategy and give you an open mind."

Di Resta said he had been left a bit wide-eyed by the prospect of racing at Monaco - despite having competed here earlier in his career when he raced in F3.

"Now you see the track is all built, I suppose it is a bit daunting when you think of what speeds you're going to be doing," he explained.

"I watched an on-board lap with my engineer about an hour ago, and it did look a pretty hot lap. I asked him if it had been speeded up or something. He was obviously hooked up. I hope it will be like that with us."

Di Resta was hopeful that his chances this weekend would be helped thanks to his Force India team having made some improvements to the updates that had not worked in Spain last weekend.

"We've another full weekend. We managed to go back and analyse our performance from our upgrades in Barcelona, and hopefully we've three different options to try here and to optimise.

"Thursday is about trying to understand that a bit better, and hopefully we can carry that on in the race car for Saturday."