Force India view Renault and McLaren as a 'significant threat'

Force India deputy team principal Bob Fernley has admitted that the new-look Renault and McLaren teams will pose a 'significant threat' to his team's efforts to retain or better their fourth-place finish from the 2017 constructor rankings championship in the upcoming 2018 campaign.

The 2018 season will be a busy one for Renault as not only will they be entering their own works team, but they will be providing engine parts for McLaren now as well as Red Bull.

Both Renault and McLaren have significantly higher resources than Force India, and Fernley knows this, along with McLaren now using Renault engines as opposed to their unreliable Honda parts, will make both teams a threat.

"Both Renault and McLaren look quite handy," Fernley told Autosport.

"They are a significant threat and we need to take it seriously. We need to do quite a bit of work ourselves to make sure that we accommodate that.

"There will be no quarter given for those three cars. The three teams will be locked into a massive battle.

"It'll always be difficult to compete against the bigger budgets, but saying that, we've done it for two years in a row so there's no reason why we can't do it for a third."

Force India have finished fourth in consecutive years now despite their financial disadvantage, but even with a resurgent McLaren and Renault on the horizon, Fernley insists his team will not change their approach.

"If you looked at the beginning of the season, which was the hard part, we didn't have the car underneath us. So we had to use a lot more racing strategy, reliability and good driving.

"That has to stay in place but on top of that, hopefully we're performing properly [in 2017].

"You'll still have that gap to the top three but there will be three teams going for fourth place."