Dilbagh Gill is the Team Principal of Indian team Mahindra Racing. His team have not had the best start to the season with Bruno Senna and Karun Chandhok struggling to get to grips with the car in the race.

Gill lets us know how he thinks the season has gone for his team and what the main challenges the team have had to overcome in the first six races.

“That’s a difficult question to answer because on the one hand we always knew that the events would be hard work and that winning a race straight away would be a challenge. We anticipated that a huge amount of work would be required and that a massive team effort was on the books.”

“We’re always striving to be higher up the grid and challenging for wins and podiums so in that respect it would have been nicer to have been fighting for these in the first half of the season. In terms of the racing action itself? I don’t think that there has been one race which has let the fans down – it’s been a thrilling season and it’s only going to continue to get better.”

Gill thinks that one of the main problem his team has had this season is the work their drivers do in the simulator is not being matched with the information they have when they arrive on track. This means that the team are entering the weekend with an optimal setup they have found from the simulator, but when they put that setup to the test their results are different.

“It’s the first season of the championship and as expected there have been a few challenges to overcome both on and off track. On track, I think that as a team it’s always difficult to determine how the track is going to look and feel when we’re preparing for a weekend – for example there have been times on the simulator when the track hasn’t quite matched what we found on event or maybe even some of the corners and chicanes change after the championship’s careful consideration.”

“I think this is something that all the teams face and we all get on with it and tackle the weekend in a very positive light. We haven’t yet had the result we wanted however we’re always pushing and we know it’s going to be there very soon.”

One advantage that Dill is grateful to have is his driver line-up. Bruno Senna and Karun Chandhok are both very experienced drivers and their feedback to their engineers has helped the team produce a car that has a good setup for the race, despite their simulator issues.

“Both Karun and Bruno have been brilliant to work with from day one. At Donington they were very constructive with their feedback as we got ready for the start of the season and as we have made our way through the first half of the inaugural year they have continued to be great to work with and a constant source of knowledge.” “It’s also been good for the team that they work so well together as that allows them to feedback data to one another and work in a stronger sense with their engineers. The comradery between them is strong and I think that compliments the team very well when working together – especially because it makes the atmosphere within the garage an even nicer working environment,” said Dilbagh Gill.

Mahindra Racing currently sit in eighth in the constructors championship, but they are level on points with Amlin Aguri. A good points scoring position in Monaco could help the team catch up the 20-point gap to Dragon Racing who are in sixth place.