Vijay Mallya is confident that Force India will enjoy one of its best seasons yet following an encouraging pre-season test.
The Indian co-owner promises there is more to come from the VJM07 after it topped the times on more than one occasion and completed almost 4,000km over the 12 days of testing.
“We are doing reasonably well,” he told the official F1 website. “Actually I am quite pleased, but largely because of the number of laps (761) that we’ve managed to achieve.
“We started off being overawed by the technical challenge, but we’ve come to terms with understanding the car better. We are now able to run it more reliably.
“Now let’s talk about the pace: there is more to come. We had a few problems at the last Bahrain test and we still have more performance to get out of the car, so the fact that we are consistently among the top three is something that is very encouraging.”
Speaking about what lies ahead, Mallya believes they can score points at the opening race and even suggested a podium could be on the cards in 2014.
“If we manage to ensure reliability – even at the current level of performance – I think when we go racing we will certainly be in the points.”
He added, when asked about a podium: “Ha, I don’t want to test my luck, but certainly this year is the right year to be optimistic.”
