Force India hoping reliability will help in fourth place fight

Force India says that it is counting on its reliability to aid them in the fight for fourth place in the constructor's championship. For the previous two seasons in Formula 1, the Silverstone-based squad has finished in fourth, last year enjoying a comfortable margin over Williams in fifth place.

However, it hasn't posted a strong defence of the position during the opening four races of the 2018 season, despite Sergio Perez picking up a podium last time out in Azerbaijan. Currently, the team sits sixth in the standings, 20 points behind McLaren in fourth.

"It’s so competitive," deputy team principal Bob Fernley told RaceFans.net. "We can have a Haas coming in there, you can have a McLaren coming in there [and] Renault is a constant issue.

"Whether we can overcome that deficit also depends on things like power units and stuff like that. We’re on a three power unit programme, how well that’s going to go with Renault during the year, there’s all sorts of other things coming into it with reliability through the year. From our side we’ve constantly proved our reliability."

Fernely also reflected back to 2016, when Force India was a good haul of points behind Williams halfway through the year, before managing to pip them to fourth before the end of the season.

"Nothing’s impossible. If you actually go back to 2016 and look at the deficit between us and Williams halfway through the season it didn’t look possible to overtake them and we did."