Force India team unveils its 2011 F1 car

Force India have unveiled their F1 racing car for the 2011 season. Named after India’s liquor baron and Force India team owner Dr Vijay Mallya, as VJM004 the new car is painted in Indian flag’s colors. For 2011, FIA Technical Regulations, with a cut in downforce, KERS and the movable rear wing chief among themhas made the new car very different from its predecessor.

‘We’ve recovered a lot of the aerodynamic performance, we believe. The movable wing is a whole new game, and we’ll be trying to exploit its performance to the max. We’ve also put in a lot of work trying to maximise the potential performance of the new Pirelli tyre compounds. Exhaust management will also be a big area of development this year. There will be an upgrade for the first race, so there are some changes that will come into effect at the Bahrain test. Further down the line there are some big updates for the front of the car coming in for the first European race’ says team’s technical director Andrew Green

Force India is not entirely new to KERS either. The 2009 car was designed to utilise the Mercedes system and the team ran it in testing, although it was never raced.
Commenting on the new KERS system, Green syas ‘The Mercedes KERS system looks very strong, and we’re really happy with it. We’ve done a lot of running in the simulator, so the drivers are well up to speed with how to use it. We’re well developed with what we have to do for harvesting and deployment. It’s smaller and lighter than in 2009, and packaging required very few vehicle compromises.’
‘There are some big developments in the pipeline, probably bigger than this team has seen for quite a while. I think we’re looking for a much stronger finish to the season, and we do recognise the fact that there’s an Indian GP on the calendar, and we are an Indian team. The plan is to be putting stronger performance on the car through the year that will lift us up the ranks.’

Force India to get assistance in aerodynamics from CRL

Force India has signed a three year agreement with Computational Research Laboratories (CRL) owned by Tata Sons for developing Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) solutions. The CFD solutions get utilized in the designing of F1 cars. According to the terms of the agreement Force India will be entitled to a High Performance Computing ecosystem including hardware and application support to customized configurations.


Developing CFD designs for F1 cars is a very complicated process which requires the usage of very high computing powers in order to come up with absolutely correct results. Apart from engine power the aerodynamics play an important role in enhancing the overall performance of the car making it go faster.


Going through the various CFD solutions allows engineers to understand the various airflow patterns by viewing the ways in which air flows around the car virtually. This helps the engineers to set up an aerodynamically efficient car. The designs will now be developed and processed on Eka which is currently our country's fastest supercomputer which is also ranked as the fourth fastest computer in the world in 2007.

Speaking to the media after the fomal agreement was signed, Dr.Vijay Mallya, Force India owner and liquor baron said that the team needed the speed and accuracy of a supercomputer to develop its car as the performance of racing cars get measured in one-hundredth of a second. He further said that we are happy to have found a partner right here in India and this partnership with CRL will help us access the best of technology at a much lesser cost.He admitted that Force India always had tremendous straightline speed but the problem area were the turns and curves. Mallya is hoping his team to overcome that problem with CRL's high speed computing strength.

This deal with CRL will reduce the time taken by Force India team in aerodynamically enhancing its cars as the simulations will now be developed by a supercomputer. Basically engineers get a two week gap before the next race to sort out the car's problems. If the CFD designs are developed by a supercomputer in a short time then the guys get more time to play around with the other issues of the car like tyre worries, engine or gearbox issues etc.

When questioned by the media about the possibility of an Indian driver in the Force India team, Mallya first asked the reporters why the particular question is always their primary focus. He then calmly said that the possibility of an Indian driving for Force India can come true only by virtue of a systematized program. He admit that a mission to find people is on.


Voicing his opinion about that the continual flak that he and his team faces for not having an Indian driver on board, Mallya commented that had he done something rash like allowing an Indian to drive with an incapable then also he would have come under major criticism.

Force India caught in legal net

Formula One team Force India has been taken to court by Aerolab. The Italy based wind tunnel operators has filed charges of serious and persistent breach in contract against Force India.

Initially it was being reported Force India was worried that features of their 2009 car had been revealed to Louts by Fondtech which is the parent company of Aerolab. Fondtech and ex-Force India technical chief Mike Gascoyne are currently developing a car for Lotus which is making a return to Formula One next year. The ground reality is that Aerolab had abruptly ended its three-year long collaboration with Force India in September this year.

According to Jean Claude Migeot, Managing Director, Aerolab, the lotus rumors were designed with the intention of damaging the company’s reputation and professionalism along with diverting attention away from the facts. He said the truth is that Aerolab is suing Force India for not fulfilling its obligations. He further said that it is unusual for the company to comment on negative matters but it had been left with no choice other than making the facts public after recent press reports had said that Aerolab passed on information to parent company Fondtech which enjoys a close technical relationship with Lotus F1 Racing.



Force India has not issued any statement so far regarding the allegations.