Force India aiming to bring operation under one roof

Esteban Ocon (FRA) Sahara Force India
© XPB 

Force India is working on plans to bring its entire Formula 1 operation under one roof in the future.

Currently the team's workforce is split between different locations. Chief operating officer Otmar Szafnauer estimated that 75 per cent of staff worked at its main base in Silverstone.

However a quarter work from other locations. The team's aerodynamic staff rely on Toyota's former windtunnel facilities in Cologne, Germany.

"Hopefully in two or three years' time, we'll have everyone under the same roof," Szafnauer told Motorsport.com.

Speaking before Christmas, the team's technical director Andy Green suggested that a streamlined production process had been vital to Force India's success in 2017.

Szafnauer appeared to agree with this analysis, and said that bringing the staff together under one roof was the natural progression.

"Co-location helps a lot, if everyone is under the same roof, which we are not [at the moment]," he said.

"More manufacturing capacity helps," he continued. "And windtunnel efficiency and CFD efficiency also helps.

"Some of the changes have come to fruition already," he said. "But there are some big pieces out there that we still need to put in place.

"Some of those things are happening now," he noted. "Some will be in place in the short term. Others are more medium term."

Szafnauer said those pieces were necessary to allow the team to take the next step forward. Even just to stay in fourth place in the constructors standings would require extra effort in coming seasons.

"Fourth is massively important because for us," he explained. "Having the smallest budget in Formula 1 means the discretionary part of our budget is really small.

"If the prize money dips at all, it's the discretionary part we will be unable to spend. And it's this part that gives us our development capabilities, and doing all our experiments to be able to develop the car's performance."

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