Force India on brink of running new front wing

Nicholas Latifi (CDN) Sahara Force India F1 VJM11

The Force India team is hoping to roll out a new front wing for the VJM11 this month.

The new component could be on the car as early as this weekend in time for the Canadian Grand Prix. Failing that, it will definitely be in action at the French race on June 24.

The deciding factor on when the new wing will be pressed into action is availability, the team's technical director Andy Green explained.

"We think now it is ready to race, we just don't have enough of them," he told Motorsport.com this week.

"We didn't want to risk the wings until we have some coming through, which will at the latest be Paul Ricard."

The team has been busy testing the new wing in preparation for its roll-out.

"We did a lot of testing of it in the post Barcelona test," said Green. "That proved to us that it was at a high enough level now that we want it on the car.

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He said that the wing had proved to be "a good step forward" at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.

"We would be confident then, with the updates we are bringing in Paul Ricard, that we should take another reasonable step."

The team is still playing catch-up compared to its 2017 form. Force India was fourth in last year's constructors championship but is currently in sixth place in this year's standings.

It failed to score in two of the first three races - and took only a single point in Bahrain. But since then things have been looking up, with third place for Sergio Perez in Baku.

"Part of the issue was not having the car that we wanted at the beginning of the year," Green admitted. "There were parts that we really wanted on the car that we couldn't have, so we had to wait."

Without going into specifics, Green added that the delay at the start of the season had been "budget related."

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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.