Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsForce India

Force India 'encouraged' by gains with VJM09

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Force India has been "encouraged" by the gains it has made with the new VJM09 over the winter.

The 2016 car was launched in the pit lane ahead of the start of pre-season testing in Barcelona on Monday, with Alfonso Celis set to drive on the first day. Chief operating officer, Otmar Szafnauer, says the team has been seeing the benefits of the overhaul of its aerodynamic department which it undertook ahead of the 2015 season.

GALLERY: Force India VJM09

“The wind tunnel programme in Cologne is maturing nicely and I’m encouraged by the gains we have made over the winter," Szafnauer said. "The first major aero updates should be on the car in time for Melbourne and we also plan another big step for the start of the European season.”

And technical director Andy Green says the team will benefit from being able to further develop what was a strong 2015 car.

“You can say the b-spec car from last year formed a basis on which to build our 2016 one,” Green said. “We were in a situation in which the performance on track was very good, and in which the data we were getting correlated well to what we were expecting, so we knew we could continue to develop on a solid platform.

"With the regulations likely to change for 2017, it didn’t really seem like an efficient use of our resources to start from scratch on a project that would have such a limited lifetime.”

Follow live coverage and timing from pre-season testing here

GALLERY: Pre-season testing day one

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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.