Force India; A Team With No Name At F1 Testing With No Point

It was back in 1971 that “America” released the bizarrely groovy tune “Horse With No Name”, a song with a marvelous originality to it that almost makes you overlook just how little thought obviously went into naming the band itself. This is quite the reverse of Force India in Formula One who are putting a lot of thought into their new branding and taking their own sweet time over it, which explains why, when they turned up for pre-season testing, they were the team with no name in Spain.

Pre-season testing is a press launch by another name. Sure the teams claim they’re getting valuable data from running their cars, but really it’s about offering motoring journalists a single attractive location in which to speak to the various teams ahead of the championship and start the publicity ball rolling, and indeed this ruse might well have gone unnoticed again if the weather hadn’t spoiled things by being too cold to make it useful, and indeed the weather meant the team with no name went almost unnoticed.

“The Beast From The East” is the somewhat overly hysterical name the British tabloid press gave the cold snap that hit Europe recently and Barcelona saw snow rendering the thin vein of “testing” laughable, but fortunately the press have never turned down hospitality just because of lack of news and instead turned to gossip to entertain their readers sat in a poker room in India who have been following the efforts of Vijay Mallya and co. The gossip being they’re a team with no name right now.

Snow Way To Run A Formula One Testing Session

Turning up to a “Pre-season Testing” session that is then hit with snow is pointless from an engineering standpoint, you’d get more useful data from a computer simulation, and likewise turning up to a press launch as a team with no name, devoid of all branding and logos is, if we’re honest about it, just as daft however Force India are still in the process, we are told, of changing their name, something from which the press were distracted by the snow, the new halo on the cars and Bernie Ecclestone going gaga.

“It’s one of those things that doesn’t happen every day, so you’ve got to get it right.” Explained COO Otmar Szafnauer who went on to explain the delay was due to various opinions on the change from stakeholders and potential sponsors, as well as “cyber-squatters” taking up domain names that the team would need. This skips very lightly over the fact that Vijay Mallya (along with Nirav Modi) have just spawned a bill in parliament (a different sort of casino in India this year) that would see their assets seized to pay their debts.

The Team With No Name At Testing With No Purpose

Now if you’re a rich Indian gambling laws on asset seizure wouldn’t apply to an F1 team you’re probably going to lose, so perhaps the name change will also see a change of ownership as Mallya liquidizes some assets before the Indian authorities catch up with him again, cash is far easier to hide than two large pink internationally recognized go-karts. Will they get round to changing the name before Australia? Probably, it’s unlikely Sergio Perez and Esteban Ocon will be driving for a team with no name in Melbourne.

Of course if you’re going to be doing some online gambling in India and fancy backing Force India this season it may disappoint if they ditch the Indian connection entirely, and be a great shame for Indian motor racing fans who don’t care for the personality lacking teams like Ferrari and Mercedes who field woodentop drivers like Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel. Force India might be the team with no name right now but they’ve still more character than the rest of F1 who are pretending to be “testing” F1 cars in the snow.