Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsForce India

'Hard to get back to business' - Mallya

Force India team principal Vijay Mallya says "it will be hard to get back to business" following Jules Bianchi's death.

Bianchi passed away on Friday evening following nine months in a coma as a result of an accident at last year's Japanese Grand Prix. The Frenchman was Force India reserve driver in 2012 and almost raced for the team the following year. With F1 returning to racing with this weekend's Hungarian Grand Prix, Mallya - who paid tribute to Bianchi at the weekend - says it will be a tough race for all involved.

“We head to Budapest in a sombre mood after the events of the weekend," Mallya said. “It will be hard to get back to business, but we go to Hungary looking to build on our competitive showing at Silverstone. The debut of the b-spec car met our expectations and has delivered the performance step we anticipated.

"It’s a boost for everyone in the team and we are moving in a good direction for the second half of the season. Over the next few races we will work hard to extract even more performance and build on this momentum."

With Force India targeting Red Bull in the constructors' championship, Mallya says the team is well placed to kick on in the second half of the season.

“The double points finish at Silverstone has consolidated our fifth place in the Championship. We’ve picked up 28 points from the last four races and there is a good opportunity to score more points in Budapest. At the start of the year we said we would target fifth place in the standings and that’s certainly an achievable goal. We are now looking at the teams ahead of us and will try and close the gap further.”

Jules Bianchi: 1989 - 2015

F1 drivers pay tribute to Bianchi after death at 25

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter

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.