Vijay Mallya unveils Team Force India

Jan 11, 2008 Formula One

For the first time ever, a Formula One team was unveiled in India, as Vijay Mallya announced that Giancarlo Fisichella, Adrian Sutil and Vitantonio Liuzzi were the drivers for the Force India team for the 2008 season.

Fisichella and Sutil will be the main drivers and Liuzzi, the test and reserve driver. It has been a long road for Fisichella, and one that he may suddenly be unfamiliar with, especially after being with a top team like Renault. To me, he’s always seemed a driver who had enormous potential, but somehow didn’t get on the podium as often as he should have.

Mallya was quite realistic and didn’t expect any miracles, saying his objective was to have the team on the podium in 2010, also the year when India will host a Formula One race for the first time ever.

There were hopes that we would see Indian drivers in the team, but Mallya was practical in this situation as well, saying,

“The engineering team needs to benefit from the drivers. We had to choose the driver to fit the purpose. No Indian driver did..”

By making this statement, Mallya has clearly set his sights high and made his intentions pretty clear. He wants the team to be noticed, but for all the right reasons, and has not fallen prey to the hype and jingoism that invariably accompanies all such nationalistic “historic” moments.