Prior to the Italian Grand Prix, Force India conducted its latest straight-line aerodynamic testing, as crucial as ever since any in-season running on circuits was banned at the start of the 2009 season.
After seeing Adrian Sutil qualify second and finish fourth last year, Force India were highly disappointed with this year’s result of 16th for the German and 12th for team-mate Vitantonio Liuzzi, who narrowly missed out on a World Championship point.
“That certainly wasn’t our plan,” Team Manager Stevenson said in the post-race podcast.
“I have to say, we came here reasonably confident; we’d found some big improvements for the car with a low-downforce setup in the wind tunnel, we put everything on to the car and we were hoping to come here and get both cars into Q3 and hopefully qualifying sort of top six area.
“It was very surprising. We hear people complaining that they don’t have as much power as we do, when it comes to engines and horsepower and things, but clearly that isn’t the issue.
"I think what has happened is that there definitely is engine parity and at Monza that’s the place where you clearly show it, so again that’s underlined how competitive our car has been all year.
However, Andy is pleased with the pre-race test session in England and now looks on to the five season-ending ‘flyaway’ races with self-assurance.
“With the aero tests we get so few of them and certainly for us we have to try and take as much of an advantage of those days as we can,” he continued. “We have to stay in the UK to do it, because our budget sort of restricts us to that, but it was incredibly productive – it was probably one of the best aero days we’ve had.”
Series
Formula 1
Personalities
Andy Stevenson
Teams
Force India F1
Other
DTM Tickets (best price guarantee!) at Sportstadium.com
| Andy Stevenson | |||
|---|---|---|---|
 |  |  | |
| More Andy Stevenson photos | |||
English
Nederlands
Español
Italiano
