A glance at the calendar shows there’s a three-week gap between the Grands Prix in Bahrain and Spain, but with a tight logistical schedule and routine servicing and repairs to be done, there was never going to be a chance for Force India, or any of the other teams, to experience any down time. In fact, preparations for Barcelona began in earnest on the Sunday evening after Sergio Perez’s eighth-place finish.

48 days - and four hard fought races - had passed between Force India’s pair of VJM08s leaving the factory in Silverstone for the Australian season-opener and returning back to HQ from Bahrain, so it’s perhaps unsurprising that Gray said his squad’s cars were looking “a little tired” when he unpacked the freight on the Tuesday morning after the race in Sakhir.

“I actually had both cars stripped fully in Bahrain on Sunday night whilst we were packing up there,” explains Gray. “So the cars came back in the air freight in kit form - all the parts were stripped - and what that meant was that when the freight came back it was just a case of getting those parts into the relevant departments (in the factory).

“It meant that I could get the chassis off to paint, the bodywork that needed repairing into repair and so on.”

This approach meant that although Gray only collected the team’s freight from the airport on the Tuesday morning after Bahrain, by that afternoon all of the departments in the factory were busy because they had everything they needed to get on with their jobs.

“What that means to me is that they turn those parts around much quicker than if they have to wait for a car to be stripped when it gets back,” explains Gray. “That then leads on to me having the parts back quicker and subsequently being able to build the cars back up again sooner. So it plays into my hands a little bit more - and gives the factory a little bit of breathing space - if I get those bits stripped before we come back.”

Whilst a lot of post-race service work and repairs are carried out in-house, Force India’s deal with Mercedes-Benz means that their engines and associated energy recovery systems are shipped straight back to the German manufacturer’s UK base in Brixworth, whilst the squad’s gearboxes and hydraulic systems - provided by the Mercedes team - return to the world champions’ factory in Brackley.

After unpacking the freight, one of the first jobs that is tackled back on UK soil is getting the pair of chassis repainted to remove the stone chips and scrapes that have accumulated over the first four races.

“We tend to try to get four races out of a chassis paint,” says Gray, “but then probably only two races for all the bodywork - maybe even one depending on where we’re racing.

“(At the flyaways) we send stuff backwards and forwards to the UK (for painting) or take enough quantities of parts so that we can rotate them.

“With some of the bigger teams it’s a little bit different - they build and take enough chassis so they can rotate them as well, but for ourselves we don’t have the luxury of doing that. We just have to keep them going throughout.

“Now, for the first time, we have them available to go to paint, so they’ll look nice again for Spain and Monaco. There’ll be a possible repaint after Monaco because you never quite know what that race is going to bring with all the walls and incidents. Also because Monaco is a street track you tend to pick up more damage and debris from those sort of tracks, so we would tend to do a full repaint after Monaco. In fact generally after every two races in Europe we’d tend to do that.”

Unlike other teams who have painting facilities on site, Force India use an outside company to ensure their paintwork is up to scratch.