Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsForce India

Force India gets engine upgrade in Austria

Force India will run with an upgraded Mercedes power unit at the Austrian Grand Prix this weekend.

While Mercedes has yet to spend any of its tokens, the engine manufacturer has still been able to make updates to its power unit for reliability purposes. With the works team running with the updated engine in Canada, Force India will follow suit this weekend in Austria and Sergio Perez says it is a case of good timing.

"Yes, it is an uprated one, so it is a good place to have a new engine," Perez said. "This track is quite important for the engine, so hopefully it can give us a good boost and we can be in a good position.

"I expect to have a little bit of a gain with the new engine, so hopefully we can be in a great position. This track is similar, or even higher, engine related to Montreal so it is a good place to have a new engine."

While Force India will have a B-spec car in Silverstone, Perez says there are no new parts which can be run on the current car in Austria.

"We are going to have it for Silverstone. We are doing some testing with some of the parts in the test, but the main upgrade will come for Silverstone. It is very good news because there is only one race left, so hopefully we can score points this weekend and then aim for a much better second half of the year with the upgraded car."

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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.