Halo playing havoc at Force India

The Halo safety device has baffled Force India, who are yet to solve the aerodynamic challenges posed by the cockpit protection. Technical director Andrew Green has also revealed the "huge" financial cost that has hit the team in incorporating it.

Opinion remains split over the Halo device, which has been seen on each and every car at the first pre-season test of 2018 at the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona.

Less than a month removed from the season-opening race in Melbourne, Green reveals Force India are still struggling to get their heads around the Halo.

"From an aerodynamic perspective, the work is still ongoing really," Green said. "There's a significant downstream effect [from halo], especially around the rear wing area.

"It's not designed to be an aerodynamic device. It doesn't do us any favours in that department.

"It requires a lot of work to mitigate the issues that it causes, and we're still actively working on that, and I don't think we’ll have a solution until Melbourne.

"I'm confident that we'll have it under control by then."

Green also discussed the financial impact that has hit Force India for a second off-season in a row after the fresh regulations ahead of the 2017 campaign.

"Expense-wise, it's huge, because we had to do a new chassis," he said.

"We wouldn't have anticipated doing a new chassis this year, given the amount of changes that we made last year.

"For a team like us, we'd always look to try and get two years out of the chassis if possible.

"In that respect it cost us a huge amount to redevelop and redesign a new chassis - it's in the hundreds of thousands if not million-dollar mark to put that halo on the car.

"It was a huge challenge [anyway]; for a team like us it was massive."