Bahrain: Paul di Resta finished fourth with an impressive drive to give Sahara Force India Formula One team the best show so far this season at the incident-filled Bahrain Grand Prix on Sunday.
Di Resta, who started the race in fifth place, missed the podium by 2.2 seconds at the Bahrain International Circuit.
The Briton also led the race for a few laps before ending 2.2 seconds behind third-place finisher Romain Grosjean of Lotus, to bring home 12 points.
He equalled his best ever finish in F1 race. The last time he finished fourth was at the 2012 Singapore Grand Prix.
Team-mate Adrian Sutil, who started sixth, finished 15th after an having a minor accident with Felipe Massa's Ferrari in the opening lap of the race. The German could not recuperate and had to settle for a non-point finish.
After tHE race, Di Resta and Sutil are eighth and 12th in the drivers' standings with 20 and six points respectively. In the constructors' standings, Force India are fifth with 26 points ahead of heavyweights McLaren (23 points).
Triple World Champion Sebastian Vettel won the 57-lap race in one hour and 40 minutes while Lotus drivers Kimi Raikkonen and Grosjean were second and third respectively.
Di Resta said he was happy with the speed of his car and looking forward to a podium finish. "It's great to round off the fly-away races with a fourth place and a race that was probably my strongest Grand Prix.
"The podium was very close, but with our strategy we were always going to be vulnerable at the end of the race especially to Grosjean who had two new sets of medium tyres.
"I had a good start to the race, a strong opening stint and we showed our true speed today, but ultimately fourth place was the maximum that was possible. We will get on the podium one day, hopefully soon, but for now we can be very happy with the points we've scored today. I feel we managed to get 100% out of the car," said the Briton.
Sutil said he was disappointed with the car puncture in the beginning of the race. "It's disappointing to get a puncture in a race that looked so promising. My start was clean and I was racing Massa going into turn four. I was on the outside; I gave him a lot of space but he was off-line and made contact with my front right tyre. I don't know what he did exactly but I had a puncture immediately. I had to pit and lost a lot of time, which ended my chance of scoring points.
"I had amazing pace and I just kept my head down to try and recover something from the race, but I had lost too much with the puncture. But I'm happy for the team and fourth place for Paul gives us more points. We will keep focused and next time score points with both cars," said the German.
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