Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsForce India

Force India B-spec set for Austria shakedown

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Force India is on target to give its B-spec car a shakedown at the in-season test following the Austrian Grand Prix.

Having run with an underdeveloped car for the 2015 season so far, Force India will introduce a B-spec in time for the British Grand Prix. While the new car’s race debut is likely to come at Silverstone, deputy team principal Bob Fernley told F1i Force India should be able to give it it two days of testing in Austria after it passed its crash tests.

“We’re still trying to get it [to Austria] for the test, we’re still trying to make sure we’re doing the shakedown there,” Fernley said.

“I’m hoping it puts us back in to the mix. That’s the first phase of it. What I think people have underestimated is how big of a reshuffle we have done from our aero department. We’ve completely changed our aero philosophy, the way we’re working, our correlation programs. Really since Russia last year effectively we’ve been getting all this in place. Then we’ve moved wind tunnels, reorganised several people and it’s not a five minute job.”

And Fernley says there are exciting developments for the car waiting to be implemented if the B-spec car performs as expected.

“The first test of [the restructuring] is Silverstone. Hopefully that will deliver us in to the pack, but assuming it gives us the performance edge we’re looking for, there’s already stuff in the pipeline coming through that makes it even more exciting. We’ve just got to correlate it now when we get to Silverstone.”

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.