What do we now know about Force India in 2018?

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Date: 12th March 2018 at 10:23am
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Formula One winter testing is now all wrapped up.

After 8 days of testing in Barcelona, everyone in the paddock is now trying to guess how well everyone has done, who are the main contenders and who could be struggling.

Along with Williams, another team looking likely to fall behind in 2018 is Force India.







Over recent years, Force India have been the team that have over performed in regards to the budget that they boast.

Their consistency has enable them to be regular point scorers and they finished fourth in the 2017 Formula One World Championship.

But with both Renault and McLaren expected to improve in 2018, a top five finish looks to be a tad optimistic.

Especially following their performances in the two winter tests.




Mileage wise only Haas and McLaren completed fewer laps, 711 in total 329 laps less than Mercedes, the equivalent of about five Grand Prix race distances!

Performance wise and Esteban Ocon set the teams fastest time of 1minute 18.967s on day 8 of testing using the hypersofts.

That time was over half a second slower than Toro Rosso and Haas and almost a second off the pace of Renault and Red Bull.

?We can look back at these two weeks feeling pretty satisfied. Despite the time lost because of the weather last week, we were able to complete our ambitious programme and made good progress in understanding the VJM11. The reliability of our car was one of the highlights of testing: we were able to run solidly without any significant issues and, for a new car, this is a remarkable achievement. The whole team did a great job and we can now switch our focus to Melbourne.? Force India Chief Engineer Tom McCullough told forceindiaf1.com.

The drivers however were somewhat less enthusiastic.

‘Hopefully we don’t have this car in Melbourne,’ Sergio Perez said after wrapping up testing.