Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsForce India

Force India looking for fifth or better in 2016

Force India's chief operating officer Otmar Szafnauer says that he believes the team has done enough during winter development and testing to ensure that it continues to run in fifth place or possibly do even better in the 2016 Formula One world championship.

"I would say we’re not going to be far off where we finished last year," Szafnauer told F1i this week. "Our target has to be to finish at least where we finished last year - fifth or better - and improve on the amount of podium positions that we’ve had.

"Our relative performance has to be better than last year," he added. "I think we made great strides towards the end of last year and if we’re able to keep that relative position I think that’s a winter success for us."

Not that Szafnauer is taking anything for granted, being all too well aware of the competition that awaits them in Melbourne next week.

"It’s very tight in the midfield there with Toro Rosso, Williams, ourselves and Red Bull, if you want to call that the midfield," he said.

"There’s only a couple of teams that are clearly ahead and that’s Ferrari and Mercedes. Even Ferrari I don’t think are that far ahead of us."

Among the challenges that Szafnauer faces coming into the new season is how to split Force India's limited resources to address the upcoming technical regulation changes in 2017. But that is the same for everyone, and Szafnauer said it might even play to the team's advantage.

"If we do a good job early on and people switch over to 2017 at the same time we do, maybe even chasing fourth would be realistic," he speculated.

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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.