Formula 1 News

Force India to announce 2008 driver line-up 

Vijay Mallya, Force India owner, revealed this morning that the team will announce their 2008 driver line-up at the end of this month. The team formed with Spyker’s acquisition, has only one of the racing seats for 2008 championship still available, as the other belongs to German driver Adrian Sutil.

During the testing session that took place last week at Jerez in Spain, Force India tested several drivers but the main candidates for the vacant seat will probably be: Roldan Rodriguez, Giancarlo Fisichella, Vitantonio Liuzzi and Christian Klien.

In an interview with the official Formula One website, when asked when Force India driver line-up for 2008 season will be announced, Vijay Mallya said: “At the end of December. I want to think very clearly about who will sit in the second cockpit. It is a very important decision for me and the team and I do not want to jump into anything. I will evaluate all the facts and then make my move.”

“It will be a very difficult decision that I have to make,” Mallya said. “All of them are very good, they would all bring different strengths to the team. Clearly we have Adrian Sutil on the one side and I need to make sure that the driver in the other car is able to raise the bar, so that both drivers keep raising the standard of performance all the time and help the engineering team along. In the past the team was looking for money, so money was the prime motivating factor for the driver line-up. Now that has changed. For me the prime factors are performance and the ability to give feedback to the engineers. Formula One is an extremely competitive game. It represents the highest level of technology. Developing a car aerodynamically is easier said than done and we are not the only ones working on enhancing car performance, there are others who are trying to improve their car even more. But having Airbus on our side to do our CMT development is a major step forward because they have a huge amount of resources to assist us. We have our own two wind tunnels, which both are running 24/7, so I have given the engineering team everything for success. The time frame? I have given one very clear objective, at the 2010 Indian Grand Prix Force India has to be on the podium.”