Force India season 'starts in Barcelona' - Fernley

Force India deputy team principal Bob Fernley says his team's season starts in Barcelona despite already holding fourth place in the constructors' championship.

While Force India has rarely had the fourth-quickest car on outright pace, the team has continued its momentum from 2016 and secured points with both cars in each of the opening four races. That consistency has seen it earn a 13-point advantage over Williams in the constructors' standings, while Red Bull is only 26 points ahead in third place, but Fernley sees the Spanish Grand Prix as crucial as the midfield teams all bring major upgrades.

"Credit to the race engineers and credit to the drivers, because they are not working with a perfect package by any means," Fernley told RACER. "So we've had to make compromises, we've had to do things, but as we said right after Barcelona testing it was going to be about damage limitation and about making sure we deliver. It could not have been better for us – four races and four double-points finishes.

"For me the season starts in Barcelona. We've really got to make sure that we can go toe-to-toe with Williams from a performance basis, because once everybody starts settling down those opportunities become less and less.

"It's nice to have that buffer while we ramp ourselves up to it and hopefully the next steps after Barcelona – probably from about Silverstone I think you'll find Esteban [Ocon] and Checo [Perez] are really competitive against each other. It's going to be very good."

Force India will bring some new parts in Barcelona that Fernley describes as more of "a correction" than an update, with the balance of the car having been compromised so far this season.

"[It's aimed at] correcting the weaknesses! It's mainly towards the rear end of the car, I won't go into huge details but we just need to stabilize it a bit better. That has a knock-on impact – if you've got something missing at one end then you've got to adjust for it at the other end and that means you're not running at optimum anywhere. That's what the race team has done such a fantastic job on over the four races."