Traditionally, Force India would start the season strong and then tail off. This year, following the buy-out of the Silverstone-based outfit by a consortium led by Lawrence Stroll, Racing Point has started the season on the back foot.

Though the team is one of six that has scored points in all three races, Serio Perez and Lance Stroll have struggled, only once making in through to Q3, courtesy of the Mexican, who, following a superb opening lap last weekend, scored the team's best finish of the season so far.

"It's been a difficult start," admits technical boss, Andrew Green. "I think the competition is incredibly tight in the midfield this year - tighter than I've known it for a long time.

"I think we're just slightly behind," he continues. "We're not a long way behind, but I think our weaknesses were probably exposed in the first couple of races.

"We've got a plan to obviously bring us back to our target level of performance, it's going to take some time, but I think we have to remember that the car was originally conceived in the mid-to-late part of last year, when the team was in serious trouble.

"We were really struggling at that point. We had to make quite a few decisions about the car and the architecture of the car back then, not really knowing what was going to happen with the team, whether there was even going to be a team.

"We are still getting out of that," he admits. "It will still take some time. We're in a much better place now, but improvements take time. It takes time to build the infrastructure up to where we need it to be.

"It's easy now to say that we have the bills paid at the end of each month, which we never used to be able to say, so it's one less thing to worry about. But there are more things to think about, as far as the performance of the car, where we're going in the future, which is something we're thinking about a lot, where the regulations are going and where we're going to go in the future. There's a lot to think about now."

With the team having signed an agreement to use Mercedes windtunnel, Green was asked if this signals a Haas-Ferrari style partnership.

"We'll be moving into the Mercedes tunnel in Brackley for purely efficiency reasons," he replied. "Our aero department happens to be located in Brackley; Mercedes wind tunnel happens to be located in Brackley. It's a lot easier to go testing in Brackley than it is in Cologne. So, when it was offered as an opportunity for us to go testing there, it was an obvious choice."

"We are not doing a Haas-Ferrari model because Haas was a new entry, a team created from scratch," interjected Toto Wolff. "These guys exist for a long time.

"I don't see what's so bad in a Haas-Ferrari model actually," added the Austrian. "We have enabled somebody that was keen to enter Formula One in setting up a team, with the cooperation with Ferrari it got out of the blocks really well, and fights solidly in the midfield. I think that's good for Formula One.

"Our model is very different. For the reasons stated before, Andy and his team know pretty well what they want to achieve with the car, they have a solid technical group of people and will go in that direction. They will be using some of our infrastructure and we will see where that moves for the 2021 regulations. Once these are carved out, we will decide which of the areas we want to collaborate and where it is possible, regulatory-wise."