Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsForce India

Force India in a strong position to chase early big results

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Force India is confident it can chase strong results from the start of the season after completing a successful testing programme with the VJM09.

Last season saw Force India have only two days of pre-season testing with its new car, with performances improving after it introduced a B-spec car at the British Grand Prix. This year the VJM09 is an evolution of last year's chassis which finished the season strongly, and chief operating officer Otmar Szafnauer says pre-season testing has put the team in a strong position.

“Compared to last year it was a thousand times better!" Szanfauer told F1i. "The car ran reliably and it was relatively pacy too. In the second test we ran some upgrades that we wanted to test for future races that we’re going to put on for the next few races. Those ran successfully, we’ve got some changes to make and you’ll see those in Bahrain and Spain.”

Asked if Force India's target is the opposite of 2015 and the team will therefore look to start strongly, Szafnauer replied: “We have to.

"We’ve got to make a strong start quickly this year because in 2017 the regulations change significantly and there will come a point where we’re going to have to switch all of our development to 2017 and curtail our 2016 development.

"That will happen sooner rather than later, whereas last year we could develop all the way to the end because whatever we learned in ’15 also applied to ’16. That won’t happen now from ’16 to ’17, so it’s important for us to start strong, develop in quick succession and get the car to a seriously good level so that we can compete for the rest of the year and then move our resources over to 2017.”

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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.