The Force India CEO Otmar Szafnauer has said that his ambitious team must be looking to keep to a consistently high pace throughout 2010 if they are to continue to build on their strong end to the 2009 season.
Last season was seen as a breakthrough year for the former backmarkers, with the team securing their first points, first pole position and first podium in the second half of the season, ending the year in 9th place in the constructors standings with 13 points.
But they were still prone to inconsistency, with the car working well at low downforce tracks like Monza, and particularly Spa-Francorchamps, but struggling at higher downforce circuits like Singapore and Abu Dhabi.
And the wonderfully-named Szafnauer believes that the team must look to curtail that issue in 2010 and become competitive at all sorts of racetrack.
"[There were] two things that happened," he told Autosport when asked about the team's impressive end to 2009, "One...the tracks favoured us, but two, we made the car better as the year went on. Our goal over the winter was the continue that trend.
"One, not lose our strength on those circuits, but two, continue to put downforce in the car in an efficient manner so we'd be strong on the circuits we weren't so strong relative to the others. I think we achieved that."
He pointed out that the car was competitive in testing at the downforce-critical tracks of Jerez and Barcelona, and he added that the team would be looking to make upgrades to the VJM03 as early as the second race.
"We ran in [last week's test at] Barcelona what we are going to run in Bahrain," he affirmed, "And then we have more updates for Australia, and then nothing for the rest of the flyaway races."
Szafnauer also explained the reasons behind the team's unusual plan to run their reserve driver Paul di Resta in some Friday practice sessions in 2010, saying that the team was looking to develop the "potential" of the young Scot, and this was impossible with the current in-season testing ban.
"The presence of di Resta is mainly because we see potential in Paul for the future," Szafnauer rambled, "He is still a young man and it's difficult to nurture that potential without in-season testing, so how do you do it? And one way to do it is to run him on Fridays.
"It could have the unintended consequence of pushing the race drivers a bit. Fine, nothing wrong with that. Back when most teams had third drivers, it didn't cause any difficulties to the racing drivers in the teams. Zero whatsoever."
He added that the plan was to run Di Resta in the first Friday practice session of selected race weekends, with the team's race drivers Tonio Liuzzi and Adrian Sutil taking it in turns to stand aside for the session.
"The plan, as it stands today, is he will do one of the Friday sessions and then we swap, so Tonio loses one on a Friday and then Adrian loses one on another," he explained.
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