Force India
New parts for Force in Bahrain, can we beat Honda?
By Karl King
April 1 2008
Force India F1 will be hoping to close the gap further to the teams in front of them at this weekend's Bahraini GP. The team's cheif technical officer, Mike Gascoyne, says the VJM01 will be sporting "several new aerodynamic parts on the front wing and new brake ducts", which he hopes will give the team a performance increase.
Gascoyne noted that the team had improved massively on 2007, when it was owned by Dutch carmaker Spyker and didn't have the funds needed for continued development of the F8-VII chassis.
This year, however, with the increased funding available under Vijay Mallya, the team has "made large gains with our own tunnel coming on stream coupled with the continuing use of the Aerolab facility. Now we are really starting to see the results," Gascoyne continued.
Referring to the team's common goal of reaching Q2, which has so far alluded them in the 2008 season, Gascoyne said "hopefully this new step will allow us to get there in Bahrain."
Giancarlo Fisichella added that "hopefully with the new improvements in Bahrain we will be able to investigate some more set up options and should be able to get rid of the understeer that plagued us in Sepang."
As well as the objective of trying to reach Q2, Fisichella noted Toro Rosso and Honda as the teams he thinks he'll be racing against in Bahrain.
"In Malaysia we were fighting hard with these two teams and were very close in lap times, especially with Rubens," he said.
"I think to beat him we need to have a good strategy, but now we know what we have to do, we can look into it in Bahrain."
Digg
Delicious
Facebook
Reddit
Stumbleupon
I'm sure a rain race may hold something for the team. Remember Fisi's 1st win in F1? That was at the rain drenched race at Interlagos in 2003 and he won in a Jordan
