Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsForce India

Force India to keep updating 2015 car

Force India will keep updating its 2015 car in order to protect its fifth place in the constructors’ championship.

Having finished sixth last season, Force India is in a strong position to improve on that result as it currently sits 17 points clear of Lotus having scored points in eight of the last nine races. While, team principal Vijay Mallya says the pace shown by the car at the last two rounds is encouraging, he does not want Force India to ease off on development this year.

“I’m feeling optimistic as we approach the final couple of months of the season,” Mallya said. “In Singapore and Japan we continued to show competitive pace and, despite missing the chance to score with both cars, we remain in a solid fifth place in the championship.

“Russia will give us another chance to unleash more potential from the B-spec car. Even at this late stage of the season we continue to bring new parts to the car thanks to all the hard work back at the factory.

“There’s every reason to believe we can be competitive in Sochi and we expect to be up there fighting for good points.”

Before the Japanese Grand Prix, Nico Hulkenberg had scored just once in four races as Sergio Perez impressed, but Hulkenberg says he was been encouraged by his sixth place at Suzuka.

“The result in Suzuka was just what I needed after a few unlucky weekends since the summer break,” Hulkenberg said. “We had good pace, we did our homework and we achieved all we could from the race. It was very satisfying to see how competitive we were and that’s given me a confidence boost for the races to come.”

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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.