Force India ready to run seamless shift

The new gearbox, which the team believe is worth 0.3 seconds per lap, was used during a 50-kilometre straightline shakedown test at Silverstone on Wednesday.

"It is was just some development running because we don't have access to a transient gearbox dyno, which is where you would normally do a lot of the characterisation of the box," Force India's chief technical officer Mike Gascoyne told autosport.com.

"We just work through a programme of characterisation for the all the systems. We worked through two fully seamless shifts and Giancarlo (Fisichella) did the driving and he was very pleased with it. He said it felt like when he drove the Renault one. It was very pleasing.

"We had no problems at all. That is a very good job from the guys considering we don't have access to the sort of rigs that you would normally set these things up on."

Force India will give the gearbox its first proper test at Jerez next week, then will run it on both cars in Friday practice at the Hungaroring before deciding whether to use it for the race itself.

"Obviously with the four-race gearbox rule, we have to consider when we can put them into the programme," Gascoyne said.

"But certainly we will run them on the Friday and maybe for the whole weekend.

"We will see what happens here (in Germany). Obviously if we don't finish here then we can change the gearbox. Maybe we will choose to take a hit anyway because obviously it will give us performance in the race."

Gascoyne hopes the seamless shift will allow Force India to gain significant ground on the rest of the midfield group as it should give the team a 0.3 seconds per lap gain.

"Obviously you have got to get it set up correctly to do that," he said. "But also it can help a lot with car set-up because you are not disturbing the car in the corner. That can have a knock-on effect.

"We are not that far off Honda and a couple of the teams in front of us, so we are hopeful. It's something all the other teams have and we don't, so it is a clear gain for us. It would be nice to join the group in front of us."

He is optimistic that the gearbox will combine with recent aerodynamic upgrades to help Force India move forwards in the final part of the season - especially as their main rivals start to focus on 2009.

"In general we are very close to the group in front," said Gascoyne. "And we need this sort of step forward to maintain that. Development will drop off through the course of the year as people concentrate on the 2009 cars and this is obviously a development that others won't be able to match.

"So we hope that it will allow us to move off the back row, which considering we are the smallest team in Formula One and we have only had a proper budget for six months, the fact that we are still only a tenth or two off Honda is a good effort."