Force India 2008 Season Review: A Respectable Performance Despite No Points

To read my review of Honda's 2008 season click here.

Notes

Chassis – VJM01

Engine – Ferrari

Team Owner – Vijay Mallya

Team Principal – Colin Kolles

Technical Director – Mike Gascoyne/James Key

F1 debut – Australia 2008

F1 points – 0

Championships won – 0

Season highlight: Adrian Sutil fighting his way to fourth place in the Monaco GP.

Season lowlight: Adrian Sutil being taken out by Kimi Raikkonen whilst in fourth place in the Monaco GP.

Drivers

Giancarlo Fisichella

Age – 32

Nationality – Italian

F1 debut – Australia 1996

Races Started - 212

Wins - 3

Pole Positions – 3

Fastest Laps - 2

Points – 267

Adrian Sutil

Age – 25

Nationality – German

F1 debut – Australia 2007

Races Started - 35

Wins - 0

Pole Positions – 0

Fastest Laps - 0

Points – 1

Force India may have been at the back of the grid for the majority of the season, but they deserve more respect and rewards than they earned this season.

The year started with another name change. This was now the third name change since Jordan got taken over in 2005. However the new charismatic owner, Vijay Mallya, seems to be a much more committed team owner than his two predecessors. He has invested a lot of money into the team, and the whole of India are now passionate supporters.

Force India, as the team was now called, started the season with a much improved budget. The facilities had also been improved as a new aero lab was built abroad, and with high profile technical director Mike Gascoyne, and James Key looking over the development of the car, the condition of the team was the most positive for years.

The team continued to develop last season’s upgraded Spyker for use in 2008. A whole range of updates were made available for the car including: a new bargeboard, side pods, diffuser and a new floor to name just a few.

In testing it looked like the team had taken a big step forward. Both drivers seemed very happy with the car. It’s aero efficiency and mechanical grip was much improved over the Spyker in 2007. Over the winter the team gained around 1.3 seconds in performance over their rivals. This was a bigger gain than any other team on the grid made.

In the first race in Australia Giancarlo Fisichella qualified in 16th, meaning that he had qualified ahead of a Renault and a Toro Rosso (along with the Aguris). In the first qualifying segment he was only 1.5 seconds slower than Heikki Kovalainen, who topped that part of qualifying. Compare this to the same point last season and Adrian Sutil was 2.6 seconds away from the leader’s pace. That shows the improvement that had been made in a short space of time.

In the first segment of qualifying in Malaysia, Giancarlo Fisichella was only 1.0 second of the leader’s pace. This was compared to 3.3 seconds off the pace in 2007 at Malaysia. In the race Fisichella was also very competitive, and for the most of the GP he was battling in the midfield. His fastest lap of the race was a very respectable 1.5 seconds slower than Nick Heidfeld’s quickest lap.

So far, this season was looking like it was going to be a big step forward for Force India, and maybe an outside chance of points on merit. However, once Super Aguri left the scene after the Spanish Grand-Prix, they took up the spot at the back of the grid. They slipped back from the midfield runners as they weren’t able to consistently keep up with their rates of development.

Throughout the season Force India always remained around 2.0 seconds off the pace, often under. This was still a great achievement. Despite the big investment from Vijay Mallya, Force India’s budget was still down compared to just the midfield teams. Teams like Honda and Toyota have mega facilities compared to Force India.

Force India brought lots of upgrades to the car throughout the season in a strong development programme for such a small outfit. This included the seamless shift gearbox. This by itself was worth around 0.3 to 0.5 seconds.

However, these just prevented them from falling off the radar, as opposed to gaining on the group in front of them. Towards the end of the season they got very close to the pace Honda- Honda had all but given up on their 2008 car to concentrate on their 2009 project.

The second half of the season turned out to be as huge disappointment for the team. Everyone was a bit disappointed that despite all the hard work and investment, which went into the car this season, the team spent most races at the back of the grid. The morale wasn’t as positive as it had been in the first half of the season.

Unfortunately for Force India, 2008 was an extremely competitive year for Formula 1. Only 2.0 seconds covered the entire field. F1 hasn’t been this close for years and years. In many other seasons Force India’s car would have been fast enough to run in the top 10 on a regular basis.

In fact, in the 1997 Australian GP qualifying session, being 2 seconds off the pace would have put you on the second row of the grid, nevermind the top 10. The minnows in that qualifying session were over 10 seconds off the pace.

These days, F1 is full of big manufacturer teams with big budgets and grand facilities. This is why, regardless of the fantastic job Force India have actually been doing for their size, they struggled to vacate the back row of the grid. In this writer’s opinion Force India didn’t deserve to come out of the season with no points.

They were very close to getting points in Monaco but were denied by the cruelest of luck. In the wet race we saw the best of Adrian Sutil. He fought through the field overtaking car after car. He got upto as high as fourth position. Sadly, disaster struck when Kimi Raikkonen, then in fifth position, lost control of his car and spiralled into the back of Adrian Sutil’s Force India- Surprisingly Kimi Raikkonen didn’t get penalised for this incident.

When you think of some of the soft penalties handed out this season, this was quite an injustice. Not that it would have made Sutil feel any about the situation or have made any difference to Force India as a team. This was by far Force India’s best race of the season. Their other greatest moment was in Brazil, where an inspired call to put Fisichella on dry tyres early got him as high as fourth position. Fisichella was also running third in Singapore for a time after a Safety Car period shook up the order.

Driver wise Giancarlo Fisichella performed very well for Force India this season. Many thought that he would be outclassed by Sutil in 2008. As it turned out the boot has been on the other foot. Fisichella seemed to crumble under the pressure whilst driving in a front running car at Renault.  In slower cars he has always excelled despite their shortfalls. This has been the case this season and he got every last tenth out of the Force India. In qualifying he beat Sutil 10-8.

Sutil struggled against Fisichella mainly due to the Bridgestone tyres. Sutil is a very aggressive driver and the 2008 tyres just didn’t suit that style. He struggled to change his style to adapt to them fully, but he was better towards the end of the year. The only time he really stood out was in the wet in Monaco. A completely different style of driving in these sorts of conditions are required and that suited Sutil much better. Next year slick tyres may suit his aggressive style more and he could beat Fisichella next season.

Next season Force India will be partnering up with McLaren so will get the benefit of a Mercedes engine, McLaren gearbox and chassis. This should put them into very good shape for next season providing McLaren make a good job of their 2009 car of course. This is probably the best way for Force India to move up the grid next season, as doing everything by themselves for 2009 would have been very hard and stretched their small budget.

Vijay Mallya will also be investing a lot more time into the team next season. He has now realised how big a job owning a F1 team and making it a success is. Previous owners of this team have experienced that feeling and sold the team. Mallya though is very different and has the drive, and ambition to get the team where he wants them. This team now have much needed stability, which has been lacking in the last few seasons.

Final Verdict

It may not look it on the points table, but Force India have done a great job in 2008, with their modest budget and facilities. They improved the car substantially over last season. Only the fact that the field was mega competitive put them at the back for most of the season. 

In most other seasons they would have been solidly in the midfield. That is just the way F1 was in 2008. Nevertheless Force India were very unlucky to leave 2008 with no points. They definitely deserved some sort of reward for their efforts.

As well as improving, the team is now stable with Vijay Mallya willing to put the work in, as opposed to giving up the fight and selling up. The collaboration with Mclaren will see that Force India have a very good platform to build on next season.

If they can improve the car as much as they did between 2007 and 2008, they could find themselves in very good shape in 2009. Although on the negative side, could letting Mike Gascoyne leave the team be a big mistake?