New Pirelli tyres hurting Paul di Resta's performance: Vijay Mallya

Force India team principal Vijay Mallya has blamed the new Pirelli tyres for the recent string of poor performances by Paul di Resta.

Pirelli introduced new tyres starting from the last race in Hungaroring, maintaining the 2012 structures while using new 2013 compounds. But the new product from the Italian manufacturer has seemed to hurt the Silverstone based Sahara Force India and its Scottish driver Paul di Resta in particular.

di Resta was heard complaining over the team radio about the tyres not heating upto the optimum temperatures fast enough, both during the qualifying and in the race.

Vijay Mallya said: “The tyres have played an important part in determining performance the whole season. We invested in resources to understand the tyres better and that worked for us very well, which is evident in our position as we are fifth in the constructors’ championship.”

“But after Silverstone the tyres changed. It would be fair to say we are going up a steep learning curve to try and understand these tyres better. In the last race in Budapest, Paul in particular struggled with his tyres all weekend. They did absolutely nothing for him. He was unusually uncompetitive” Mallya told Sporting Life.

However, Mallya is confident that di Resta will bounce back to his good form which he exhibited in the major part of the first half of the season.

Mallya rejected suggestions about the problem being in the car. Instead he told that the tyres seem to be not compatible with di Resta’s style of driving.

“That problem is specific to Paul. It’s not a car problem because the same thing would have happened to Adrian as well. It’s a problem we need to fix for Paul, and we know we can because Adrian[Sutil] was comfortable with the tyres.”

“The two have very different driving styles – Adrian is harder on his tyres, Paul is softer, can make them last longer. Therefore, maybe it takes a lot longer for him to get heat into the tyres and for them to start functioning. It can be a whole range of things.”

“So it would be wrong on my part to admonish the car at this stage,” Mallya added.