Force India aiming to bring operation under one roof

Force India is working on plans to bring its entire Formula 1 operation under one roof in the future.

Currently the team's workforce is split between different locations. Chief operating officer Otmar Szafnauer estimated that 75 per cent of staff worked at its main base in Silverstone.

However a quarter work from other locations. The team's aerodynamic staff rely on Toyota's former windtunnel facilities in Cologne, Germany.

"Hopefully in two or three years' time, we'll have everyone under the same roof," Szafnauer told Motorsport.com.

Speaking before Christmas, the team's technical director Andy Green suggested that a streamlined production process had been vital to Force India's success in 2017.

Szafnauer appeared to agree with this analysis, and said that bringing the staff together under one roof was the natural progression.

"Co-location helps a lot, if everyone is under the same roof, which we are not [at the moment]," he said.

Force India development to remain at full speed in 2018 - Green

"More manufacturing capacity helps," he continued. "And windtunnel efficiency and CFD efficiency also helps.

"Some of the changes have come to fruition already," he said. "But there are some big pieces out there that we still need to put in place.

"Some of those things are happening now," he noted. "Some will be in place in the short term. Others are more medium term."

Szafnauer said those pieces were necessary to allow the team to take the next step forward. Even just to stay in fourth place in the constructors standings would require extra effort in coming seasons.

"Fourth is massively important because for us," he explained. "Having the smallest budget in Formula 1 means the discretionary part of our budget is really small.

"If the prize money dips at all, it's the discretionary part we will be unable to spend. And it's this part that gives us our development capabilities, and doing all our experiments to be able to develop the car's performance."

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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.