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Formula One
F1: Force India Debuts The VJM03
The wraps have been taken off the VJM03...
Adam Cooper  | http://www.speedtv.com  |  Posted February 09, 2010   Balen (BEL)
The VJM03 will be campaigned by (L-R) Adrian Sutil, and Vitantonio Liuzzi with Paul Di Resta as test driver. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

Force India unveiled its VJM03 online on Tuesday morning, prior to its public test debut at Jerez tomorrow. The new Red Bull and Virgin contenders will join the seven cars already seen at Valencia last week.

The VJM 03 picks up where its successful predecessor left off, but the team has the big advantage this year of having a stress free winter. Last year the decision to switch from Ferrari to Mercedes power, and ditch the in-house gearbox for a McLaren design, was made very late. That inevitably created some compromises as the 2009 car was already well under way.

This year the team has been able to focus more on pure performance development, and dealing with the rules changes.

“Our goal is to continue on the same glide path of performance improvement that we had at the end of 2009,” says Chief Operating Officer Otmar Szafnauer. “It’s difficult to predict our form, because it’s relative to what others doing. The experience that we have here and the infrastructure that exists certainly puts us in a better position than the new teams coming in, because they’ve had to do so much more than just build a car. The fact that we are able to react quickly, because we’re not a very big team, will also put us in a good position once we’re running.

“This time we knew early on what we were doing, so we could start the program earlier, we could start development earlier. The numbers look promising. We’re confident that we’ve done a decent job over the winter, and we’ll see where we go.”

“It’s obviously been a lot smoother!” says technical director James Key. “It’s the first time in a while that we’ve had early confirmation of what the engine is going to be for the next season, and that helps things massively, because a) you’ve got relationships already established with the suppliers, and b) you fundamentally know what to expect. So it helps a great deal, and thus it’s felt a lot smoother this year compared to this time last year.”

The car is a logical development of last year’s model, which earned a pole position at Spa.

“Some of it looks quite different, and some of it will look quite familiar,” Key explains. “It’s a natural progression in areas which seemed to have strong trends at the end of 2009, and in other areas it’s really quite different. Obviously everyone has had a year of experience with these aero rules now, and the double diffusers. So we’ve all gone into 2010 much wiser to what we might want to do in the future, and what sort of things we’ve got to make sure the car can cope with.

I guess you could say the back of the car is the area that has evolved most. The packaging with the engine and everything else has been better. We had quite sweeping bodywork last year, which had a certain function. We’ve had more time to think about it, and that looks quite different.”

Although last year the McLaren gearbox happened to lend itself to a switch to a double diffuser early in the season, this time the team has been able to design the car around one.

“It’s formed part of the make-up of the car this time around, rather than being added very quickly, as happened at the beginning of last year,” Key said. “It’s natural now to design the car to take these devices. The gearbox is now a little bit easier to work around, and there are tweaks to make the diffuser potential bigger. We’ve tried to make use of that. So there are some notable differences.”

The chassis has of course changed to accept the larger fuel cell required in 2010.

“I’m sure like every other team we’ve just tried to make the best compromise we can. You are quite restricted by the regulations in how far you can push the fuel forward, for example. The side of the chassis, in pure performance terms, is really defined by your aerodynamics – what you want to do with your sidepods, and how big your radiators need to be, and so on. Then you’ve got vehicle dynamic wheelbase implications and aerodynamic wheelbase implications that you’ve got to consider. You’ve got to weigh all those things, and hope you choose the best compromise.”
After a busy off-season in 2008 that included engine and gearbox changes, this year the designers were able to focus more on performance development and rules changes. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

Force India also intends to make full use of the option to run an adjustable front lap, which was only briefly seen last year. It will help to address the balance changes created by the fuel weight change over a race distance.

Adam Cooper notched up his 25th season as a racing journalist in 2009. Born in London, England, he saw his first F1 race at age 10 in 1976. He began freelancing for Autosport magazine in 1985 and was on the fulltime staff from 1987-92. He then went freelance again, initially spending two years in Japan before following the 1994 Champcar series from a base in Indianapolis. He has not missed a Grand Prix since Suzuka ‘94, a run that has extended to Abu Dhabi ’09. Adam has written books about Eddie Irvine, Piers Courage and Michael Schumacher and hosts a race preview show on Sirius XM. He has written about F1 for SPEEDtv.com since 2005. Check out Adam's Blog or follow him on Twitter

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