Force India is confident a scheduled aerodynamic test ahead of next week’s Italian Grand Prix will help ensure it can at least match its giant-killing Spa form at Monza.
The former back-of-the-grid outfit produced one of the biggest shocks in recent Formula 1 history by qualifying on pole in Belgium, having never even made Q3 in dry conditions, before narrowly missing out on an astonishing race victory to Kimi Raikkonen’s KERS-assisted Ferrari.
With the next round at high-speed Monza requiring cars to run in similar low-downforce trim, Force India team manager Andy Stevenson expects the VJM02 to perform just as well – particularly as it will head to Italy having already run the car in full Monza specification during a straight-line aero test.
“You normally see the people who perform well here [Spa], or perform well at Monza, do the same at the other track,” he told Force India’s latest podcast.
“We’ve been here a few times and done well and gone on to Monza and done just as well, so I’m looking forward to it very much.
“Luckily also, we were looking back just before Valencia saying, 'right, we’ve got to push, these are the races we really need to work on now' and we had scheduled in one of our very few aero tests for this week.
“So it is going to give us the luxury of taking the car to the aero test in full Monza spec and working on that car to develop it as much as we can before we get to the race.
“So the timing for us is perfect. I’m fairly confident we’re going to go to Monza with the same sort of pace we’ve got here or if not better.”
The small Silverstone-based squad’s sudden emergence as a front-runner acted as the latest example of how competitive the entire field now is in the sport’s new era of technical rules, according to Stevenson.
The Force India team manager says all 10 teams now have to be operating at their maximum every race weekend if they wanted to be at the front, adding that his team was making procedural tweaks to ensure it too was at the top of its game.
“It yet again goes to show that with the new regulations you just cannot afford to make mistakes,” Stevenson added.
“You have to push everything now to the edge of the envelope.
“There is no comfort zone anymore and I think you are going to see this in qualifying now, more and more. You wont have the drivers thinking they have got a bit of time and thinking the track is going to come to them, they’re going to have to be doing laps and using up tyres because the guys who were qualifying at the back are now qualifying at the front.
“They don’t have that luxury anymore
“Also for us we have got to sap every little bit of time out of the car we can.
“We changed some procedures today [Sunday] from what we had been doing, outside of our comfort zone, just to gain a little bit more performance and I think we did it.
“We are raising our game in every direction.”
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