It’s currently full steam ahead in the Sahara Force India factory at Silverstone as the team continues the build process on the first VJM05. The car will be unveiled to the media at Silverstone on February 3rd, prior to the start of the first test at Jerez four days later.

As we noted here recently, this year the schedule is slightly different. That’s due to the new FIA requirement that all crash tests be passed before a car is allowed to commence testing, as opposed to before the first race weekend.

That meant it was necessary to have all the required items designed, built and ready for crash testing earlier than normal, in order to allow for a safety net, should there be any problems.

Fortunately everything went to plan, and the tests were successfully completed in December. That accelerated schedule has created a little extra margin in January which the team can now take advantage of.

“We’re in much better shape compared to 12 months ago,” says Technical Director Andrew Green. “We’re looking for a higher level of build quality to get us off to a good start. We have time to get things absolutely right, so we know when we do hit the ground in Jerez, everything has been fully tested, and we understand the car completely with respect to all the structural design.”

In other words, the team has more time both to put the first car together and to run tests on it before it leaves the factory.

A Racing Car Is Born

“Basically the quality of the build improves, because things aren’t rushed to the car. The first off parts that you make, you get them to fit properly, which means that we can go back and ensure that the second off and third off – the ones that follow it – are exactly the same, rather than keep making one offs, which can happen.

“We have the opportunity to build sub-assemblies, check them, measure them, make sure that everything is to drawing, and then go back and make sure that if we do have to modify anything for the ones that are coming through, then those modifications are already incorporated.

“We are then in a much better position for car number two, because all the little modifications that we had to make have been made to all the components that have to go into car number two – they are already incorporated. Its build becomes so much shorter and easier as well. And because those build times get reduced it means we then have capacity in the factory to start looking at updates earlier, which is what we’re looking at now.”

The team is thus able to put a greater focus on development parts for the later tests in Barcelona, the first race in Australia, and beyond.

One other key advantage of the extra time is that the team can undertake more extensive rig testing in the factory than it would usually have time for before the car heads off to Spain.

“As much as we’d like to do these things, they are the tests that tend to fall off the end if you’re running late,” says Green. “You can’t postpone the track tests – so if it’s a choice whether the car goes in the truck now, or we do some more rig testing, then obviously it goes in the truck

“Once the car disappears it’s surprising how long it can be before you get another car that you can actually do the tests on! It’s almost when they come back from the flyaway races in April. The schedule is that tight, it’s test, test, pack-up and go to Australia, and there’s no slack in the calendar to pull a car out and say, ‘Let’s do a week’s rig testing on it.’ This year we’ve got that luxury, to do those tests before we go to Jerez.”

Rig testing plays a hugely important role and gives the team substantial extra knowledge of the car even before it runs on track.

“One key area is validation, in that we validate that everything is to design spec. We can perform some suspension tuning early on to make sure we’re in the sweet spot for suspension set-up, and check fundamental kinematics.

“It just gives us confidence that we’ve built what we’ve designed, so when we do go to Jerez and there is a handling trait that we’re trying to dial out there are fewer question marks over parts of the car. It allows us to focus, during winter testing, on getting the car set-up optimum.”