Paul di Resta relishing first 'home' GP in Monaco

Paul di Resta has fallen in love with the Monaco lifestyle after recently making the principality his home.

Although a Scot to the core, Di Resta felt for the sake of his Formula 1 career it would be beneficial for him to move to the south of France.

It means this weekend's Monaco Grand Prix becomes one of two 'home' races for the 25-year-old, with the British round at Silverstone in July. "Moving to Monaco was definitely the right step for me," Di Resta said. "I love being at home in Scotland, but you can't travel from there.

"We travel 30 weeks a year, so it's a good place to travel from, to relax and enjoy it. Then we also have the weather for training and my trainer also lives in Monaco.

"Being here helps me stay focused. I felt whenever I had time off it would be the right place to switch off. You're out of the way. So it was about the lifestyle more than anything else. That's what it was, a full lifestyle change. Formula 1 is a short life, so I definitely want to enjoy it and I just love being here."

Now Di Resta cannot wait to savour a full-blown grand prix weekend in Monaco, although there is appreciably a degree of apprehension as it is six years since he drove around the unforgiving streets.

"It's one I'm so looking forward to, in particular as it's a home grand prix bearing in mind I live there now," added Di Resta. "It's going to be something special.

"Monaco is about using track time and building yourself up slowly, so hopefully that approach will work. But with the barriers so close, a different mentality is needed."

Di Resta endured another difficult race in Spain on Sunday as the new upgrade package that ran on the car in Friday practice at the Circuit de Catalunya was ditched for the weekend.

He is hopeful it has since been fine-tuned and will be back on the car for Monaco where the team enjoyed a strong performance last year, with their cars eighth and ninth. Despite the issues in Barcelona, Di Resta still managed a superb 12th, but is eager for more speed to ensure he can break into the top ten on a regular basis.

"We came away from Spain feeling relatively happy, but clearly we need a bit of pace to make the next step and score points again," he said. "The team have done work on how the car was running with the new package, and they've been in the tunnel and seen the direction.

"Hopefully it is going to give us a bit more performance and we did see benefits in Spain - big benefits at certain points. But it still makes this weekend a difficult one to gauge."