Paul di Resta rues Force India's one-stop European Grand Prix strategy

The Scot finished seventh after stopping just once, but suspects that had he adopted a similar strategy to both Mark Webber and Michael Schumacher, who stopped on lap 38 and 41 respectively, he could have finished more strongly.

"I think the result says it all, we clearly missed a trick," he said when asked by AUTOSPORT about how his strategy worked out. "We were fairly aggressive and stuck with it when we probably could have bailed out [of the one-stopper].

"I passed Webber on track, and two laps later he pitted. That was about eight laps after the safety car. He got the last laugh on me.

"Obviously we had it [a one-stopper] in mind before the race. It probably wasn't on the cards right away but then during the first stint they said the strategy we wanted was working so we would stick with it.

"You've got to follow what the guys are saying. I've done nothing wrong there. Unfortunately that's two races where I've been in great positions where things that I can't control have made a difference to the race result."

Di Resta added that he is confident about Force India maintaining its strong form at the British Grand Prix in two weeks' time after the double points finish in Valencia.

The team has made good progress with getting the best out of a major upgrade package introduced in Spain three races ago and there will be further tweaks for Silverstone.

"Ahead of Silverstone we've got some minor upgrades coming which should give us some performance," he said. "I'm quite hopeful of that, so if we can carry on where we are we should be going into it thinking positively."