Force India didn't maximise Monaco result - Fernley

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Force India failed to maximise its Monaco Grand Prix result despite a podium for Sergio Perez, according to deputy team principal Bob Fernley.

Perez finished third after impressive strategy saw him jump ahead of a number of cars when switching to intermediate and then soft tyres. However, with Nico Hulkenberg finishing sixth despite starting from fifth place, Fernley says the team missed out with the German.

“It’s excellent, really really good," Fernley said of the result. "Very exciting but I think we could have done a little bit better. We need to look at ourselves and our own internal programs from the strategists, we could have probably got Nico further up than we did.

“Both drives were faultless. Both drivers were just amazing with what they did, so no complaints at all there. So from that side everything is good, just internally we need to examine if we could have got a bit more out of that.”

Asked if only maximising the result with one car is due to being a small team, Fernley replied: "No not really.

"I think we’ve got the capabilities of doing that, but I think we made a mistake and we need to look at it very carefully and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Hulkenberg has yet to score a podium in his F1 career, while Perez has now finished on the podium at least once in each of his three seasons driving for Force India.

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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.