Force India eyes 2017-like upgrades in 2018, hails good decisions for F1 success
The Indian outfit has always been exampled as 'punching above the weight' team in Formula 1.
After successfully defending fourth place in constructors' championship in 2017 Formula 1 season, Force India is gearing up for a fruitful 2018 season in a similar development programme like in the previous year.
"I definitely do not see any tapering in development at the moment; maybe we will see it at the end of the year but maybe not even until 2019,” said Technical Director Andrew Green. “The development slope we are seeing from an aero perspective is still very steep and the incentive to bring upgrades to the car as soon as possible is as high as it was last year.
“2017 was a very big change to the aero regulations and to fully exploit those was always going to take a long time. We spent a lot of time last year, with the VJM10, learning and trying a lot of different ideas and concepts in the background.
“Especially when we could see we had some breathing space on the teams behind us, we used a lot of our Friday practice sessions to this effect – not going out to put performance on the car, but working on future learning.
"The fruits of this will be evident in the early part of the season, when the car will undergo some significant changes. I expect us to follow a development pattern similar to last year’s – lots of smaller updates almost every race, interspersed with some bigger ones.
"The changes for 2019 are currently pretty small, so we will want to develop this car until the end of the season. We hope to be able to carry over the philosophy of this car into next season so some stability in the regulations for a couple of years would be good – at least until the big tsunami of changes planned for 2021,” he explained.
The first test in Barcelona saw Force India do the least number of laps in its new VJM11, with a total of 166 laps between Nikita Mazepin, Sergio Perez and Esteban Ocon. However, it is expected the team will do more running in the second test on March 6-9.
The team is also vary of the competition from the rest of the midfield teams, especially the likes of Williams, Renault and McLaren. The idea is to keep fourth again, but close the gap to the Big 3: Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull Racing.
One of the prime factors for the team to remain successful in F1 is because of its core team. In terms of officials, Otmar Szafnauer has been with the team since 2009, with Deputy Team Principal Robert Fernley there since start, same as Team Manager Andy Stevenson and Green there since 2010.
Team principal Vijay Mallya believes that since the management has remained the same for pretty much its existence in F1, the decision-making has been crucial to keep improving on its results over the years.
“I think the size of our team forces us to justify every pound spent,” said Mallya. “Before any project is given the green light, we ask: ‘Will it make the car go faster?’ We rely on good long-term decision-making because there are no quick fixes in Formula One.
"Our competitiveness today is a combination of the good decisions made during the last ten years. The leadership of Otmar Szafnauer and Andrew Green has brought us great vision and the conviction to follow through on important strategic decisions, such as the shift to the wind tunnel in Cologne. We have also invested in the right people in all areas of the team and at all levels.”
Szafnauer added: “In reality the focus has been on continuity – retaining drivers, senior team members, and staff at all levels. That’s been our strength in recent years. In terms of resource, we’ve bolstered our CFD capacity and there have been some personnel changes in the engineering team.
"The plan [for us] remains to bring everything under one roof eventually, but it’s a massive undertaking and won’t happen overnight. It’s a process that will take a number of years and we are exploring the best way to make those changes without impacting negatively on performance. Ultimately, it’s a financial consideration as well and we won’t make those infrastructure changes at the expense of car development.”
Story: sportsflashes.com/en/news/force-india-expects-2017-like-development-programme-in-f1-2018/184545.html
[Image courtesy: Force India F1 Team] #F1 #Motorsport #ForceIndia #FIA #smalltribesrule #Formula1 #2017 #2018
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Comments (3)
Beautiful article, Darshan!
I feel it will be much tighter this year, the battle for fourth place. We haven't actually seen what the VJM11 can do, they've not posted any competitive times, have they? And we've seen the huge steps made by Renault and Mclaren, they could take away that place, or at least put up a good fight. Last year the SFI team was pretty much alone, the big 3 were far ahead and no one else could come close. Will be tougher this year, surely.
Thanks. Force India usually does performance runs in second test, so that will only come then. Renault seems to be well, but McLaren didn't look overly better unless they were sandbagging.
Yes, we know how good Alonso is at dragging a sort of okay car towards podiums, don't we