Force India rules out repeat Spa result

Twelve months ago Giancarlo Fisichella took his team's maiden pole position and fought Kimi Raikkonen for victory before taking second place.

But although Force India is hopeful that the strengths of its car will be similarly well-suited to the medium downforce Spa circuit this time out, the outfit thinks that it is going to be difficult to go as well as it did in 2009.

Adrian Sutil said: "Of course last year the team had a dream result at Spa, with the pole and then the podium, so we'll go back there with confidence knowing that this has been historically a track we've performed very well on.

"But this is 2010 and we have to look at what we are doing now rather than to the past. I'm pretty confident that we've got a car that will still suit the track very well. We've still got a very strong straight-line speed advantage and the F-duct makes us quickest through the speed traps at most circuits we go to - which will help us on the long straights in Belgium."

Despite downplaying talk of a victory challenge, team-mate Vitantonio Liuzzi still reckons a decent points haul is possible.

"I think we are still capable of a top position and certainly points this year," he said. "It will be very interesting to see how everything performs. We are still really confident of being back in business in the second half of the season."

Team principal Vijay Mallya added: "It's going to be tough to replicate the kind of form we showed in Spa last year: everybody's improved, the competition is fierce and also very even in the midfield - the gaps between teams is so small now.

"We have also shown that we have been regularly able to score points on virtually all the tracks, not just the low downforce ones - apart from the last two races, which were unlucky in various regards, we've been in the points at a variety of track configurations.

"We also still have some updates coming for the rest of the season so it's going to be pushing all the way, right through to Abu Dhabi. We've got the opportunity to achieve our best finish in the championship in many years and it's not something I'm going to let go lightly."

Force India will fit its new blown diffuser to both cars for practice in Belgium, having evaluated it on just one machine in Hungary. The team will also try out new low-downforce specification front and rear wings.