Team Preview: Force India - The Team With A Theme
- Published on Feb 9th, 2010 by Benson JammichelloF1 Badger’s series of team previews continues with last year’s ninth place finishers, Force India.
© Force India Media
The team’s recent history is marked by a whirlwind of different ownership. Without getting too far into it, the chain goes something like this: Jordan (we all remember that one) to Midland (eminently forgettable, competed in 2006) to Spyker (possibly even more forgettable - competed in 2007), ending neatly with Force India, who first arrived on the scene in time for the 2008 season. With such rapid turnover, there comes a point where you just give up trying to keep track and accept there’ll always be one team on the grid whose name/ownership really aren’t worth bothering with. Thankfully, however, it looks like Force India has good financial backing and is here to stay, at least for the time being.
With that in mind, let’s have a look at the man who’s brought stability to the team: Vijay Mallya, an Indian billionaire. As we saw in the Toro Rosso preview (if you haven’t read it, you really should...), it’s not uncommon for F1 teams to be part of a wider business strategy and Force India’s certainly no different. Mallya’s interest in F1 appears to involve his passion for promoting his own brands (obviously!) as well as Indian culture across the world. This hobby has included, in very James Bond style, proffering winning bids for items of Indian cultural heritage at auction – including a famous sword (nifty, eh?) and the belongings of Mahatma Gandhi. He also owns both the Bangalore Royal Challengers (an Indian Premier League cricket team) and East Bengal FC (an Indian football team). It has to be said that Force India is the only one of his three sporting teams to have a distinct global appeal, so its value in promoting India to the rest of the world is clear.
Sutil and Mallya shake on it © Force India Media
The team’s debut season in F1 didn’t go fantastically well. With a grand total of zero points, they finished tenth in the 2008 championship. Even more galling, and probably most noteworthy of their escapades during the season, was the Monaco Grand Prix. Just in case your memory doesn’t stretch back that far, on lap 68, Adrian Sutil, running a very creditable fourth having made his way through the field, exited the tunnel and on the way down to the chicane was booted up the rear by an out-of-control Kimi Raikonnen in the Ferrari. See here for the rather sad video footage.
Things in 2009 improved markedly, which may or may not have been due to their deal with Mercedes for engines, gearboxes and lots of other good stuff. Usually you’d expect a team towards the bottom of the grid to pick up points in ones or twos throughout the season but, towards the end of the campaign, Force India managed their only scoring performances with a second place in Belgium (Fisichella, after qualifying first) and fourth place in Italy (Sutil, after qualifying second). In other news, there was also a reprise of the Sutil and Raikkonen show in Germany, with both cars suffering damage yet again. Combined with some other impressive qualifying performances towards the end of the season, these race performances reflect the vast improvement made by the team, hopefully standing them in good stead for the upcoming season.
© Force India Media
Force India is one of only three teams to start the 2010 season with the same drivers that raced in the last GP of 2009, so you’ll get to see everyone’s favourite quick but crashy German, Adrian Sutil and his erstwhile Italian teammate, Antonio Liuzzi. Both have something to prove; Sutil that he can be trusted to bring the car home in one piece on a regular basis and Liuzzi that he’s, well, quick enough to deserve a race seat in F1. As excellently previewed by Jimmy Von Weeks on F1 Badger recently, Paul di Resta will be the team’s third driver, coming in with Mercedes’ backing. The team’s new car was revealed today (February 9th) during an internet launch (there’s a credit crunch, don’t you know). See here for more photos. Let’s just hope they can carry forward the momentum achieved at the back end of last season into their testing programme (due to start at Jerez on February 10th), as well as into the season proper.
Now comes the time for some predictions. Let us know what you think – agree or disagree, we really don’t mind; just make sure you get involved!
Minimum target: Regular finishes within the midfield.
Ambitious target: Consistent qualifying to the standard of the end of last season, with finishes to match.
Benson Jamichello’s prediction: A good season for Force India, including some surprising performances.
Comments and Discussion
I think Liuzzi isn't given enough credit, especially here at the Sett. He'd done more than enough to earn a continuing race seat at Toro Rosso, but was moved aside. A Williams deal fell-through when Toyota said that their engine only came with Nakajima attached and Vitantonio was relegated to third driver roles.
Unlike some of the grid's third drivers he had been doing racing to keep his skills sharp (the now-dead Speedcar series) and picked up a few wins along the way against names like Jacques Villeneuve, Jean Alesi, Johnny Herbert and er... Gianni Morbidelli.
Sure, looking at results he did struggle in his races for Force India but he was a lot closer to his teammate than the results show; in Italy he had the pace for a podium until the driveshaft/engine let him down.
Sutil we already know enough about; quick but tendency to throw it in the wall or balls-up his chances somehow. but it does endear him to people because he's more of an old-style F1 driver: Less of a robot, more of a human being.*
He made the same number of driving-errors when the pressure was on last year that he did in 2008 so at least he's levelled-out on that front, he's very good in the wet despite falling off in Malaysia last year so he could be threatening the Top 5 if the weather's in his favour.
As for the car.. it's wait and see. We know the engine is the best on the grid, but if the car doesn't have the chassis to get the most out of it then they'll be fighting Williams and Renault all season for midfield honours. and 4 to 1 points. It's especially tricky this year since we've potentially got 5 teams with front-running cars and everyone else is hoping for mechanical breakdowns in order to score points.
I'm expecting them to be clearly ahead of the new teams and Toro Rosso, and also to have the edge on Williams + Renault. I'm not seeing podiums for them unless the VJM03 is very special.. and it doesn't really look it to my eyes. They need something that works on high-downforce as well as low-downforce tracks this year.
* I personally like seeing humans driving the cars over metranomic robots delivering laptime after laptime within the same two tenths of a second. It's why i had nothing but respect for Hamilton binning it in Monza. He took his brain out for the last stint and buggered up the simulation part of racing.
Benson Jamichello, you may well be my favourite writer on here.
I shall be watching your progress very closely, as always......
I'm wondering how running Paul di Resta in Friday practice will work out for the two race drivers. It'll definitely be great for Paul, and best of luck to him, but Liuzzi/Sutil might suffer from losing a session on Friday morning. Interesting to see how Force India manage this one.
Thanks for the feedback Mr G.King - glad you like the Benson's articles - he's been welcomed into the Sett with open arms after he produced some quality proper Badgerstyle writing.
Cheers for the comment too - we like comments!
Adam - Editor