Focused on doing well in 2014 season, says Mallya

 In pursuit of achieving excellence, every single team of the grid has almost shut shop on working on this year’s car, focusing on the dramatic changes that the cars will see in 2014.

While most teams seem to be doing alright with the upgrades up until now, Force India seem to have hit a road-block. At one point Vijay Mallya’s team were fifth on the table ahead of McLaren but now they are under threat from Sauber, who are currently in seventh place.

Force India are sixth on the table with 62 points from 15 races while Sauber have 45 points and can catch up with four races left in the season.

“There was a time earlier this season when we were in fifth position ahead of McLaren. If we perform well over the next four races there’s no reason why we can’t regain fifth but Sauber have certainly given us a wake-up call and so we will do everything we can to stay in sixth. Having said that, yes, we’ve dedicated our resources to the development of the 2014 car,” team principal Mallya said on Saturday.

Sauber principal Monisha Kaltenborn had credited a rear-wing aerodynamic upgrade and the change in tyre compound to their improvement in the latter half of the season. Mallya, however, blamed the tyre change for their slip-up.

“The change in the tyres for Silverstone has been more than just detrimental to us. Within the mechanical design of the car it’s proving very difficult for us to get optimum tyre performance. We’ve dedicated all our R&D tools to the 2014 car, so we are handicapped in a sense. But having said that I think we are understanding tyres and the constraints under which we are operating slightly better. The tyres have not been the best for us in the second half of the season but hopefully whatever we suffer this year will be a good investment for next year’s car.”