Force India's new VJM10 flies through crash tests

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Force India has announced that its 2017 chassis has already passed all of the mandatory FIA crash tests, and at the first attempt.

All Formula One teams have to submit their new cars for safety testing before the start of the new season. The testing is particularly important this year because of new aerodynamic and tyre regulations being brought in, which have resulted in major changes to the chassis compared to last year.

"We've passed all of our FIA tests which is great, first try," Force India's chief operating officer Otmar Szafnauer told Racer.com this week.

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"All the crash tests - the roll hoop test, side intrusion test, front nose test - we've passed, which is great because it's all new," he continued.

"For the first time ever we laminated and built the tub itself in-house, which worked really well."

Previously the team had bought in the basic 'tub' - with Force India engineers overseeing its manufacture and lamination - but this year increased capacity at the team's main facility at Silverstone means that the entire process has now been undertaken directly by team personnel.

"We have control ourselves we can cut down the manufacturing time and allow more design and development time," Szafnauer explained. "That should help, a little bit anyway, the performance of the car.

"The later we can leave designing the tub and some of the other components, the better off we are."

Force India previously announced that it will publicly unveil the VJM10 at Silverstone on February 22 ahead of pre-season testing which begins on February 27 at the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona.

Renault has said that it will launch its 2017 contender a day earlier than 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.