Force India’s F1 underdog story looked perilously close to coming to an end midway through 2018, in the face of the team's financial struggles. But their purchase by a consortium led by Lance Stroll’s father Lawrence – after the team had gone into administration – appears to have reversed the fortunes of the squad (now rechristened Racing Point) and suggests happier times ahead. But the really happy times, according to Team Principal Otmar Szafnauer, are likely to come in 2020, rather than next season... The injection of Stroll money into Force India midway through 2018 had positive short-term effects, shoring up the jobs of the team’s employees while also paying for long-delayed updates. But according to Szafnauer, now that they’re safely out of survival mode, the team are beginning to make big plans for their future – plans that mainly centre around a larger, better-equipped factory to help take them to the next level in F1. “All those types of things we're discussing now,” said Szafnauer, speaking to Formula 1’s official podcast Beyond The Grid, presented by Bose, about how the team plan to deploy Lawrence Stroll’s money. “So a bigger factory – but to build a bigger factory, you've got to buy the land first. Also within the factory, to detail what type of equipment [we] want, how much of it, what is important, what isn’t important. All of this while we mustn’t take our eye off the ball – that is, building, designing, producing and developing a competitive racing car.”

Lance Stroll will join the team for 2019

Szafnauer also expressed his aim that, despite the extra money gracing the Racing Point coffers, the team would remain an efficiently-run operation. “I've seen it so many times where teams have decided to either build a new wind tunnel or a new factory or new facilities, and the performance of the car suffered because the same people that design and specify a factory are the same ones that design and specify the racing car,” he said, “and if you're doing one you can’t be doing the other. So we've got to be very careful that if we do embark – and we will embark – on improving our facilities and infrastructure, that the car doesn't suffer. “We've got... to continue to maintain that efficient nature that we have. We can't lose that, and if you do have a little bit more financial resource but you stay efficient, then your output should be even better. The risk is that, if you've got significantly more financial resource, you lose the efficiency, and then your output is no better, but you've spent a lot of money – or even worse, your output can be worse and you've spent a bunch of money. So we've got to consciously be aware that that can happen and make sure it doesn't happen to us.”

Szafnauer expects to see a big change in performance in 2020