Go Force India

Well, win or loose, Vijay Mallya will party anyway and you can always count on his parties being fantastic. Despite the poor or perhaps … unfortunate result for Force India Ferrari F1 in Monaco, there was this huge fly Kingfisher party at Monaco and guessing from the pictures, Dr. Mallya and everyone else there were having a blast. Thanx wolf for the great post and the pics.

Vijay Mallya:

Vijay Mallya was understandably ecstatic that his Force India team got both it’s cars to the finish. After all, the decent finish got his team’s cars more TV time.

“Reliability was the priority and the double finish has us vindicated. The idea was to bring both the cars home and we achieved just that, Giancarlo Finished ahead of Mclaren, Williams, Red Bull and Toro Rosso cars. It was a tough race, though on the cars and the drivers but the strong finish gives us confidence about a good show on the European Circuits.”

Fisichella made his way in to the good books of Vijay Mallya by scraping with Rubens Barichello & Lewis Hamilton for track positions getting his Force India car even more TV time which means free promotion for Dr. Mallya and Kingfisher. The Kingfisher longo painted on the wings of the car got a lot of attention thanks to onboard shots from Fisi’s car which the producers of the race telecast were happy to show. But Mallya who’s a perfectionist and a fierce competitor was already thinking of what might have been,

“We did not qualify well, if you remember, we qualified 12th in the practice as well. But then we made tactical errors in the qualifying session. Otherwise, a better grid position would have resulted in an even better show” he said.

He also affirmed his faith in the team’s German driver Adrian Sutil saying,

“I am not worried with his performance. You can’t predict how the car would behave. I have seen enough strange incidents happening. Today his car was damaged early that resulted in a broken nose. So I’m not going to hold it against him.”

Giancarlo Fisichella:

After finishing 12th ahead of Hamilton and some other good drivers from good teams, the Italian driver for Force India was quite content.

“Honestly, it was a good race for us. The start was good, I overtook some cars. There was oil on the track and I managed to overtake some drivers again. The race pace was very good. I managed to keep Rubens Barrichello behind for some time and even had Lewis Hamilton behind for three-four laps. Hamilton’s pace on the straights was obviously much better than mine but the car showed good, consistent behaviour. I had the 11th fastest lap time in the race, so that really is evidence of the car being very good.”

About his Losing track positionto Rubens, he said,

“That was a little disappointing. I was in front of Rubens. We were on the same strategy but that said,everything worked well for us. The team did a good job. We just need to push harder for the next race, maybe work a bit on the car balance.”

About the coming races in Europe starting with the Spanish Grand-Prix, he said,

“There are clearly some things we need to work on. A new suspension. We need to find a better compromise between balance and setup. Fir a better performance, we need a few updates on the car. Here in Bahrain, we had a couple of small updates like the brake date and they did make a small difference but we need more work on the car.”

About some well deserved time he plans to take off with his family, he had this to say:

“I really need that, spend more time with the children. They will be coming to a few races with me,” his voice perking up with the mention of his family.

If you do then there is good news for you:

The super-exclusive KINGFISHER Swimsuit Special 2008 is now up for grabs at KINGFISHER World. And the good news is that they are giving away a good number of them, so your bid does not need to be the highest to win! What’s more - you will also be helping a few social causes in the process. All the proceeds from the auction will go to these charities – Akanksha Foundation, Dignity Foundation, Jana Kalyan Welfare Society and Sense International (India). Trust me the girls are awesome, here’s some pic’s to get you drooling:

So what are you waiting for? Click here, choose your charity and drop your bid. Keep your fingers crossed.

All the best …

Now, this is in the Mid-Field positions feels the team’s Italian driver — Giancarlo Fisichella. He was candid and honest about what he thinks in an interview he gave to PTI after a glitzy ceremony to mark the team’s driver line-up on Thursday night.

“This is going to be a difficult start to the season. The first few races are not going to be easy for us. The key is not to bother and keep improving. Our real chance lies in the second half of the calendar and if we get the right direction, I think we can push to make Force India a middle -rung team,” he said.

And to be honest, if they can do that consistently, they should be a reasonably competitive team in the 2009 championship season as well. In a sport where technical & electronic superiority are a must for good performance, money plays an important role in how good you do and Mallya has already pumped in some real money and says that money will not be a problem. Another thing going for them is the fact that the king of good times — Vijay Mallya is also the king of Kingfisher Airlines and hence his personal equation with Airbus will help in also to improve the aerodynamics and other technologies in the new range of cars that his team drivers will race. Many are applauding Mallya’s hands on role in team matters a lot and being serious about decisions such as the choice of drivers. (Giancarlo Fisichella, Adrian Sutil are the drivers & Antonio Liuzzi is the test driver. Now, Giancarlo made it instead of Ralf Schumi who a has personal relationship with Mallya)

 Mallya has already announced that he intends the team to make financial profits as well and the above driver choice in my view is a sound business decision. As in any other businesses, the more you put in, the more you get in return. In F1, it’s even more critical, teams like the Ferrari’s & Mclaren’s put in 100’s of millions of $’s each year, while at the lower end, the budget for teams like Minardi are close to 50 million mark.

Thanks to Mallya, the Force Indian team has a budget of 120 million $’s which is twice of what was the team’s budget as Spyker F1 previous year. The bottom line is that If Force India can out perform teams like Red Bull, Williams etc even in the second half of the year, Force India has a bright future in the coming year and that ultimately is good for the sport of racing in India, for now, the finesse and elegance racing style of Formula1 but who knows? It may pave the way for other forms of motor-sport here as well which is something that is long over-due. The season does not start until March 16 and it will be very very interesting to see how Force India shapes up!! Though at the end of the day, it’s all about watching the likes Kimi’s & Alonso’s race each other. I am hoping Kimi does it this year as well, what do you think?

But he’s put forward, a realistic goal thankfully for the team. Reading up on today’s Time’s sport section and it’s nice to see him setting realistic expectations instead of hyping up the whole Indian F1 thing. Seems, he’s realized, no amount of Kingfisher money can make the car go close to the pace of the Ferrari’s, Mclaren’s and Renault’s of Fornula1 let alone be ahead of them or maybe they told him after he paid the 88 million Euros for the team, loll. Too bad for him, F1 cars don’t run on beer or spirits of other nature or even by lost boys. [pun intended] Hey, but to to fair, the target is indeed realistic but in my view hopelessly small for the Indian apetatite. The target he’s set the team he says is that by the year 2010, the year in which the first ever F1 grand-prix will take place in New Delhi, the team has to get on the Podium. No mention of whether it’s championship goal or it’s just at least one grand-prix position he’s talking off. So, no champs promised at least not yet!! :(

[Multiple News/Announcements ellongated posts not me]   

The rest of the info given out with regards to Force India was the self banter we know already. That the team was in a very poor condition financially, when he took over, helped resolve conflicts within team. This is when Vijay Mallya mentioned that he’s prepared to provide all the money needed for technical development and increasing perfomance of the team over all. Colin Kolles, Michiel Mol and Mike Gascoyne the team principal, team director and chief technology officer respectively have all apparently expressed confidence in a strong run for the Force India team at least over the long term and the team certainly already has the facilities required. (home test track, wind tunnels etc) But the first 6 months (1/2 season) are going to be the toughest and quite a test because the team will be using the existing Spyker F8-VII chasis [body] and develop new chasis in the mean while. The new chasis is expected to be introduced mid season. The custom Ferrari engines the team is going to be using till 2010 is also a hurdle, not quite as good as the Ferrari engines being used in the Ferrari teams cars. One Interesting thing to note is that the top 3 teams, Ferrari, Mclaren and Renault. Though Renault was substandard throughout 2007, are all engine manufacturers and race car sellers themselves but supply engines to other teams also. Now, of course they will never ever give out engines that can match their pace!! Hey, also, I am sure Renault it will bounce back with Alonso (Briotere’s winning ace for 2 successive years!!

What!! you had not heard this yet? ok now you did, he’s[Alonso] with another rookie driver this year - Nelson Piquet jr. who’s the son of a great ex F1 champ Nelson Piquet Sr. If you have good bandwidth, go watch the video with a tribute of sorts for the new driver (Most people these days do have the bandwidth, but since I am using, dial up for a while, I won’t embed the youtube video here, too much hassle with dial up, same reason for no image!)

 Ok, now the third new piece of news I am breaking is also sort of big for India in a way, the Renault team is officially ING Renault this year meaning that ING Vyasya is the primary sponsor for Renault!! see see??!! I told you before hand of the India effect on the F1 circus didn’t I! it’s started already. Or maybe is it not that big? you tell me …

Found one news to kick of the blog posts in style. No it’s not from the paddocks or the F1 Pitt Garages, it’s from the world of fashion and glitz where Dr. Mallya’s company Kingfisher has always been quite active. Apparently, besides running a spirit company operating in more than one continent, airliner, F1 team and maybe something I am missing,  Vijay Mallya has found time to launch the new Kingfisher SwimSuit Calendar 2008!! It’s photgraphed and autographed by the star Photographer - Atul Kasbekar. 

Actor John Abraham and Dr. Mallya have also thrown in their own autographs along. But the highlight are the models of course, all of them sexy, trust me on that! It was launched yeterday. (11th December). One’s got to hand it Vijay Mallya, the man is flamboyant, stylish and also a brilliant business man with a doctorate! That pehaps shows in how his company Kingfisher operates as well not lacking in style at all. I had seen the Kingfisher 2005 Fashion Awards on FTV at the time and here’s a youtube share for you:

I’d like to move around in the same kind of circles as well but maybe I will have to wait a bt for that, for now, go and have a look yourself at the 2008 KingFisher Swim Suit Calendar and don’t forget there’s a contest there, tell em why you deserve the swimsuit calendar more than anyone else, and if your answer’s the best, you walk away the with the ladies, all 12 of them!!