Force India’s engineer Brad Joyce happy with delay of season opening F1 Grand Prix in Bahrain
Force India’s engineer Brad Joyce is happy with the delay of the first Grand Prix of the new season.
The season-opener was scheduled to be held in Bahrain starting March 13, but was called off because of civil unrest in the region. There have been talks of rescheduling the event, but no dates have yet been specified.
Joyce is breathing a sigh of relief noting that due to the political unrest in Bahrain, the Grand Prix would have never been possible as the city of Manama is crowded by the protesters and all the hotels are located there.
He believes the extra two weeks will help smaller teams prepare better for Australia.
“For us smaller teams it gives us some more time to prepare for Australia as we have had a very short closed-season this year, it will help the less well-off teams to be better prepared for the start of the season,” he said.
Joyce is working hard with the team which has recently changed the driver’s lineup: Scot Paul Di Resta is replacing Vitantonio Liuzzi for the 2011 season, while Nico Hülkenberg has taken the place of di Resta as the reserve driver. Resta is the third British
driver along with Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button on the grid.
Talking about the car VJM04 which ran in Jerez and Barcelona tests, Joyce said, “It looks like our new car is not too bad, but we still have quite a bit if work to do to reach our target position for the start of the season.”
He further explained that the cars technical upgrades are like some of the bigger teams. Force India has copied Red Bull’s blown exhaust layout, which was used in the VJM04 in the Barcelona test session.
It will be interesting to see how Joyce makes use of this two-week break to upgrade the car. The Formula One season will begin in Melbourne on March 27.
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