Paul Di Resta has been making sure there will be no repeat of the weight problem that blighted his British Grand Prix weekend - by filling himself up with pies.
It was only a throw-away line from Di Resta, but it highlighted the relaxed manner in which the Scot has dealt with the issue over the past few days heading into this weekend’s German Grand Prix at the Nurburgring.
After initially qualifying a career-high fifth for the Silverstone-based Force India team, scrutineering found Di Resta to be 1.5kgs under minimum weight - when car and driver are added together - which resulted in him being dumped to the back of the grid.
In contrast to the previous two race-weekend Saturdays in Monaco and Canada, where Di Resta qualified 17th following mistakes made by the team and he vented his anger, the 26-year-old was remarkably calm at Silverstone.
Given his qualifying woes of late, asked whether he was cursed, Di Resta joked: “Well, I’ve been eating a lot of pies this week. Scotch ones too!”
He then added: “I don’t know what’s going on. When I was told on Saturday about the weight I couldn’t help but laugh about it.
“I was so much more relaxed than I thought I would be, but I suppose the sense of relief was I knew it didn’t influence the qualifying result.
“It was a kilo and a half, which is two hundredths of a second or something.
“Probably why it was different to the two grands prix beforehand is because I didn’t get the chance to show what I could have done.
“When I crossed the line (at Silverstone) my engineer came on and said ‘Whatever happens, that was exceptional’.
“You just go through stages like this. I just hope I don’t have to overtake as many cars at this grand prix - certainly not from the position I started.”
Di Resta is naturally hoping, above all else for this weekend, that Saturday proves to be trouble-free.
“I hope that’s the case,” he added.
“It was straightforward for me at Silverstone until five o’clock, or whatever it was (when the weight issue was discovered).
“The key is at least the speed is there in the car because we have gone on to recover well from what has been a few difficult Saturdays.
“This weekend we need to get it a bit more together, but I’ll only be happy when the lights go out (to start the race).
“That’s when I’ll believe it (that he has qualified in the position he starts from).
“It (a problem) has happened three times now. It can’t happen again. I hope it can’t happen again. They say things come in threes, so I hope that’s the case.
“But, if anything, what has happened lately makes you work harder. My attitude did change slightly at Silverstone in that I thought ‘Well, we’ve recovered at other races, why it can’t happen here?’
“And that’s what we did - we went out and raced our heart out.”
Given the speed of the car at present, Di Resta sees no reason why his achievement at Silverstone cannot be repeated elsewhere.
“I hope we can do it this weekend,” he said.
“I don’t see why we can’t rule it out because generally slower speed tracks have been our thing.
“There will be tracks where we will repeat. I honestly feel that, but it’s far too difficult too predict at the moment where people are.”