Overview

www.forceindiaf1.com

Force India is an Indian F1 Team who are based in Silverstone, UK. The team were formerly known as Jordan, Midland and Spyker before Indian Business man Vijay Mallya and Michiel Mol took it over.

The team originated in 1991 as the Jordan Grand Prix team before they were taken over by Midland F1 Racing in 2006 and Spyker F1 in 2007. In 2008 Indian business man Vijay Mallya brought the failing Spyker squad and transformed it into the Force India team, India's first Formula 1 team. He retrained Adrian Sutil and recruited ex-Renault driver Giancarlo Fisichella for their debut year. For their first year they used a revised chassis of the Spyker F8-VllB and Ferrari engines to create the VJM01. They had a difficult debut in Melbourne when both cars retired, Fisichella retiring on the first lap. They had set a target of beating Super Aguri, who they had been battling for at the back in 2007, but failed to score a single point unlike their Japanese rivals. A best position of 10^th for Fisichella in Spain was the closest they got to a point.

In 2009 new regulations meant the playing field had been levelled. The Indian team retained their 2 drivers and switched to Mercedes engines. The VJM02 was a big improvement on its predecessor and saw a new colour scheme adopted by the team, the colours of the Indian flag. The first race saw Sutil finish 9^th and just 1 place away from the team's first point, with Fisichella following up the same result 4 rounds later in Monaco. The car seemed a big step forward and they moved into the midfield, with the team stricking gold in Belgium. The circuit suited their cars down force and design and Fisichella qualified on pole, the team's first. In the race Giancarlo finished 2^nd after Kimi Raikkonen's KERS powered car overtook him. It was the team's first podium since the Jordan Team scored 6 points at the 2005 US GP. They scored again in Italy with Adrian Sutil finishing 4^th after qualifying on the front row. They finished 9^th in the championship with 13 points, a big step up from the year before.

The next year they continued their improvement with 7^th in the championship, scoring 68 points. This was helped by the 2010 points system being changed so cars from 1-10 can score points, between 25 and 1. They scored on 15 different occasions with drivers Adrian Sutil and Vitantonio Liuzzi, who debuted for the team they year before after Fisichella left for Ferrari before the Italian Grand Prix. Sutil scored two 5^th places in Malaysia and Belgium and scored points on 7 more occasions. The car was much improved with the VJM03 being a heavily revised version of the VJM02. The team understood the car and were pushing to develop and get to the front of the midfield pack. Their best result, as a team, was the Belgian Grand Prix where they scored double points finish, 1 of 3. Sutil finished 5^th after a very mature driver while Liuzzi finished 10^th.

For 2011 Liuzzi was dropped in favour of the teams 2010 test driver, Scot Paul Di Resta. Sutil remained at the team and saw them unveil the VJM04. The car was the first created by new technical director Andrew Green and saw them use a large range of resources from the Mclaren Applied Technologies and Mercedes-Benz HighPerformance Engines. Their 2 drivers were promoted into the points at the first race of the season after the 2 Sauber drivers were disqualified for breaching the technical regulations. Di Resta finished 10^th and equalled that result at the next round in Malaysia. Towards the end of the season the team pushed forward and saw them finish 6^th on 3 occasions, Germany and Brazil for Sutil and Singapore for Di Resta. They finished in the points 17 times shared 9-8 in favour of Sutil. This included 4 double points finishes, the best of which was at the final round in Brazil where Adrian finished 6^th and Paul finished 8^th. They finished the year overall 6^th in the constructors championship with 69 points. In October 2011 the Indian company Sahara India Pariwar purchased 42.5% if the teams shares and was renamed Sahara Force India.

In 2012 the VJM05 debuted at the first test in Jerez after being unveiled at Silverstone. They dropped Adrian Sutil and replaced him with Nico Hulkenberg, who was the teams test driver in 2011.