Andy Green on Force India's step forward

Force India will run its true 2011 aerodynamic package for the first time during Friday practice for the Spanish Grand Prix.

AUTOSPORT spoke to Andy Green, who took over as technical director during the build-up to the 2011 season. He explains why the team considers its season to start in Barcelona, what made Force India drop the aerodynamic concept that has served it so well over the past two seasons and his hopes for the 'real' 2011 car.

AUTOSPORT: Why are we seeing this new aerodynamic package for the first time now rather than at the start of the year?

Andy Green: The process began soon after I started as technical director last year. It was pretty obvious that aerodynamically we were quite stale, doing the same old thing. Our understanding was quite limited as we hand't explored some of the newer concepts aerodynamically. Around November, I realised that we needed to make a big shout and change our tactic at the cost of performance during the pre-season and in the early races. We didn't have the capacity to do two aero programmes in parallel.

I got the thumbs up to do it and credit to [team owner] Vijay Mallya for that. He was happy to take the risk even though he knew that the early [part of the] season was going to be difficult. We were always going to be in a 'black hole' for a few months to start with, but the first real 2011 Force India bits appeared in Turkey.

AS: How did the new front wing go in Turkey?

AG: We did initial running on the front end, just to check that its performance matched expectations. But it was with the standard rear configuration. That tested successfully on the Friday in Turkey. In Barcelona, we plan to put that front end together with the rear end to create what will be the basis of our development for the rest of the season and, going forward, next year.

It's a completely new aerodynamic concept for this team and it will take time to adjust the car's setup. But it sets us up for the future. There is so much potential to extract from it as the season develops.

The changes will be very obvious when you see the car and everyone is excited. It's a new venture for the team aerodynamically and has got everyone thinking hard, which is good. In the background, we have focused 60-70 per cent on this new development and we will start harvesting performance in the next races.

Green examines the new front wings, as first used at the Turkish Grand Prix © sutton-images.com

AS: The front wing is key to the whole aero regime. Is that what you validated in Turkey?

AG: The front wing moves all of the structures on the car. It's such a fundamental part of the car and sets up the airflow structures that you are going to use downstream. By changing the front wing, you change all of those structures completely.

But it's not just the front wing. It's also barge boards, the floor detail and so many details that you have to change. We probably lost 20 per cent of our downforce when we first worked with this concept and that shows the kind of commitment you are looking at. You take a big hit, and it was a big hit, then you slowly chip away at it knowing that when you emerge in the middle of the season, you will be better that you would have been. You can't do this half-heartedly. You can't do a front wing, say it didn't work and then go back to the old design. That's why it took us four months of continual development to get it back to the level where we are confident.

This car is completely different. It will handle differently, the set-up will need modifying and there will be lots of work to do trackside. It will be approached like a new car out of the box. It's a big challenge and the drivers are going to have to work together to explore the setup options so that we can increase our understanding quickly.

AS: Is it fair to characterise this as moving away from the kind of aero-efficient cars that we have seen over the past few years in pursuit of greater overall downforce?

AG: It is. These were the concepts that were used under [former technical director] James Key and [former design director] Mark Smith and the team had extracted as much as they were going to get out of it. The cars tended to be quite efficient, quite good on the low-to-medium downforce tracks, but were always shy of downforce. That was part of the reason that last season tailed off, along with the fact that the downforce we thought we were putting on the car wasn't materialising on track.

Until then, we had been good on correlation, but it was starting to diverge. That was a big reason for changing strategy.The overall concept of this package is not new. It has been used by some of the top teams for over a season now, so it brings us more into line with the Red Bull/Ferrari-style concept. We are going to be a few steps behind and playing catch up, but we can see the potential and are looking forward to getting it on the track. The plan is to run the package on Friday then decide whether to continue on Saturday.

Paul di Resta qualified well in China, but fell back during the race due to early tyre wear © LAT

AS: The timing must be key because running the 2011 aero [package] on a track like Barcelona must be far more useful than Monaco and Canada, the next two races?

AG: Barcelona is our key reference track. It will give us a clear indication of what we have changed. We will run one car on Friday in our old configuration, just to give a baseline, and then both will be running in the new configuration in FP2.

AS: Does it include a decent step on the exhaust blown diffuser

AG:It's a big area. We're taking a step towards extracting some of that potential. It's a small step initially with a lot of performance potential. There are revisions in the pipeline for Monaco, depending on how Barcelona goes, and Canada, so there are a lot of what-of scenarios in the development cupboard, each one of them depending on the characteristics of the car as we move through the races.

AS: Are there any mechanical changes or is it purely aero?

AG: We've concentrated on the aero package. The mechanical package seems to work.

AS: Given the circumstances of starting the season with a development of the old concept, is it a bonus to come through the first four races of the season with some points on the board?

AG: It is always nice to score points. We started the racing roughly where we thought we were going to be before pre-season testing. Testing proved to be slightly more problematic than anticipated and part of it was the hangover from the end of last season. We tried to understand what was happening with the car and testing the theories. We put all of that together with a revised package for the first race. It was not how we would have liked it to be in testing, but it was probably how we expected at the first race.

AS: You had a lot of airflow separation problems during testing, didn't you?

AG: I think you'll probably find that comment from teams up and down the pitlane. Knowing where the cut-off point is, knowing where that cliff is and pushing it too far and falling off the edge and having to come back a bit. That's all part of the development process and trying to correlate windtunnel to track.

Adrian Sutil got into battle with Rubens Barrichello in Turkey © LAT

AS: Looking beyond the car, how has the way that the technical team operates changed recently?

AG: There have been a couple of fundamental changes in how we maximise the performance of the car. The biggest one is increasing our understanding of how the car operates on the track and then comparing that to the windtunnel. That's where the big changes came over the winter with a bit of restructuring. We looked at how people report and how that information is disseminated and fed back into the car. It was a good job that we did because we needed that in winter testing.

That was the basis of all of our testing over the winter, continual feedback from the car, classifying it and then feeding it back to the track.

On top of that, there is the aero change, but it all fits together. It was about improving the understanding of the car. You hear a lot up and down the pitlane about teams not getting good correlation and a lot of head-scratching. That was us towards the end of last season and that's why the changes had to happen.

At the end of last season, bits were getting thrown at the car and we had no real understanding of their performance. It was just assumed they were going to work. That's why the restructure happened over the winter to make sure that doesn't happen again and if it does we understand how to fix it.

For more on this story and to find out when the new Mercedes is set to hit the track, please see this week's issue of AUTOSPORT magazine.