Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsForce India

Force India to have B-spec car

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Force India will launch a B-spec car at the start of the European season following the late debut of the VJM08.

The team’s 2015 car was only able to run for the first time during the final pre-season test in Barcelona following delays due to supplier issues. As a result, the car that was launched was very similar to last year’s design in order to run smoothly and allow the team to maximise its potential early on.

While that approach paid off with a double points finish in Australia as only 11 cars saw the chequered flag, deputy team principal Bob Fernley has told F1i Force India will have a heavily updated car by Monaco.

“It’ll be quite a significant update because what we’re trying to do now is having lost the time over the winter with the aero department reconstruction, we’ll take our time to try and bring in a decent package,” Fernley said. “Then we get the benefits of the Toyota program.

“I think it will be almost a B-spec, yes.”

With Force India having been focused on moving operations from its own 50% scale wind tunnel to Toyota’s 60% scale facility in Cologne, Fernley says it was the team’s goal to be reliable in the early races to try and pick up points.

“It’s always our plan for reliability because there’s no point having the pace and not being able to finish the race and pick up the points. So reliability is second after the safety program and then we’ll go for performance.”

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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.