Fernley: Force India hit by tyre change

Force India deputy team principal Bob Fernley says he feels the Silverstone-based squad has lost out as a result of the tyre changes introduced by Pirelli.

Running on the revised tyre in Germany at the weekend, the team failed to score a point for the first time since the Malaysian Grand Prix back in March, with Paul di Resta only able to manage eleventh spot and Adrian Sutil two places further back.

Speaking to ESPNF1, Fernley insisted that the team had lost out as a result of the changes given that its car had been designed around the original 2013 tyre, giving added importance to the upcoming Young Driver Test at Silverstone.

"I don't think we are confident, it's quite a significant change," Fernley said. "Obviously what we've got to look at is running it at Silverstone; the good positive thing is we can do a good back-to-back comparison from only a week ago. The weather was quite good on race day so we've got good data to be able to do the comparisons with.

"But the tyre is so significantly different, and the car is designed specifically around that 2013 tyre, that we will have to re-engage design work on something that we actually thought we'd stopped because we want to move on to the 2014 car. So it's not good. It's not healthy for Force India."

Fernley added that he didn't think Force India was the only team that faced the prospect of losing out from the change.

"I think there are other teams as well," he said. "I'm sure Ferrari are in that situation, Lotus seemed to go well [in Germany] but it will affect them because it's quite significant again for them. And there will be more teams; there will be some winners and there will be some losers. For sure we are a loser, the question is how much do we lose."