We're meeting our high expectations - Mallya
The Force India F1 Team heads to the seventh round of the 2010 FIA Formula One World Championship, the Turkish Grand Prix, in a buoyant mood following its double points finish at last week’s Monaco Grand Prix. Adrian Sutil and Tonio Liuzzi brought both VJM03 cars home inside the top ten, marking the team’s best-ever combined finish and bringing the season total so far to 30 points.
Q+A with Dr Vijay Mallya, chairman and team principal:
Both Adrian and Tonio finished in the points in Monaco – how pleased were you with this result? Six times in the top ten since the start of the season, and two cars in the points for the first time ever, it’s a great result for the team. And to do so in Monaco, which is such a challenging race, is really a good marker of how far we’ve come in a season. We’re a solid sixth place now in the championship, 30 points up, whereas last year we were points-free until Belgium. We’ve still got a long way to go until Abu Dhabi but at this point we can be really pleased about where we are. Every race we go to we set ourselves very high expectations and, so far, we’ve generally met them.
What has made the difference this year? We’re a lot more consistent over all types of tracks this year and have no real concerns or fears about any type of configuration or corner. Secondly, our development programme is very targeted and structured and the gains we see in the tunnel are replicated out on track. Thirdly, we have a very tight-knit, well-organised team that seems very stable now so we can just concentrate on the job in hand. I would say that this year we’ve really established our credentials as a top five team, which has made a huge difference to how everyone approaches the job in hand.
Looking forward to Turkey, what are your expectations for this round? Off the back of the Monaco result both Adrian and Tonio are very positive about Turkey. Tonio in particular needed the result in Monaco, as after a couple of difficult weekends his confidence had taken a bit of a knock. But he came back really strongly and got some more points on board, which is exactly what he and the team needs right now. We also have some new upgrades coming for Turkey, so with the result of Monaco and these developments I would like to see a similar level of performance and ultimately results.
Source: Force India F1
