Force India driver Paul di Resta believes that the team's decision to spend most of their pre-season on tyre work has been vindicated.

The team have impressed in the early stages of the campaign, beginning as the fifth-quickest behind Red Bull, Ferrari, Lotus and Mercedes.

"I think it was a good approach in the winter. Some days we sacrificed a lot of lower fuel running to work on high fuel runs," he told AutoSport.

"We were very aware of what we wanted to achieve and where we wanted to be with the car and I think we've done that.

"[The early performance] was credit to how that worked and the data that we fed back was essentially all in preparation for Melbourne."

Next up is the Chinese Grand Prix later this month.