Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsForce India

Force India chasing ‘stretch objectives’ in 2016

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Force India will set itself “a realistic but stretch objective” for 2016 as it looks to build on its most successful year in Formula One.

Following the introduction of a B-spec car in the middle of the 2015 season, Force India went on to secure fifth place in the constructors’ championship for the first time in its history. A relatively slow start to the year prevented the team from aiming any higher, but in the final ten races Force India was only outscored by third-placed Williams by nine points in total.

With Red Bull predicting a difficult 2016 with its Tag-Heuer branded Renault power unit, Force India chief operating officer Otmar Szafnauer says the team will analyse its competitors as it works out its new target for this year.

“Yeah we’ve got to now have a look,” Szafnauer told F1i. “It takes a bit of work to look at all aspects of the Formula One team to understand what a realistic but stretch objective is and that’s what we will set.

“It doesn’t make sense to set unrealistic objectives because then nobody works towards them, so we’ve got to set a realistic objective, maybe a stretch one but something that we can attain.”

When it was suggested Williams could be a realistic target for Force India as another Mercedes customer team, Szafnauer warned against making predictions too early.

“Pace is relative so we’ve got to understand what their package is going to look like versus ours and then set some realistic objectives.”

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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.