Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsForce India

Fernley: ‘No breathing space’ during pre-season

Force India deputy team principal Bob Fernley admits the team faced “no breathing space” in order to prepare its cars for Melbourne.

Following delays from suppliers, Force India only ran its 2015 car for the first time on the second day of the final pre-season test in Barcelona. With Bernie Ecclestone relieving cashflow issues for the smaller teams by advancing a payment ahead of the start of the season, Fernley admits Force India had a lot of work to do between the end of the final test and heading to Australia.

“What we’ve said to Bernie is that we’re up against it, but we’re all here [at testing] and we’re all working,” Fernley said. “So I don’t see any reason why we won’t get there, but it’s not going to be easy.”

With a second car being prepared and all of the team’s freight having left for Melbourne on Friday, Fernley explains Force India had no room for further delays ahead of the first race.

“You can have that last-minute hiccup where something just doesn’t arrive or doesn’t come or we have a problem and that would set us back. It’s as fine as that, it’s as fine as saying we have no breathing space whatsoever.”

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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.