Nico, you must be excited about the upcoming season and your return to Sahara Force India…
Absolutely, I'm happy where I am: I fit in well here and I know the team. I think they are well prepared and also I think we're looking for the same things. Therefore I'm very comfortable and I'm looking forward to the coming weeks and months.

Is it like a homecoming for you?
In a way, for sure, it is that kind of feeling. It should make all the normal processes you go through on a race weekend easier, because I know most of the people. I have the same race engineer and lots of the same mechanics, so that's going to help. It will make the transition and bedding-in time shorter.

You were only away for a year – have there been any changes?
There are a few new faces, but I'm already working with them, so I'll get used to that quite quickly. The core bunch of people is still pretty much the same.

What are your thoughts on the new rules?
It's exciting times, but there's not so much I can say at the moment – I think everybody is a bit in the dark in terms of how the car is going to behave, what it's going to be like, and also the driving sensation for us in the car. There are quite a few question marks still there and I think we can't really give you all the answers until we've been out on the track running.

Are you the sort of driver who can adapt very easily to whatever driving style is required?
I think you need to be able to adjust to the required circumstances and adjust your driving style. It's not easy and it will be a big challenge for everyone involved. The drivers have to deal with fuel management and everything else as well, but I think that’s exciting. Going into the season I've never been in a situation like this in Formula One where we know so little about what to expect and what's coming.

Do you see it as an opportunity for the established order to be mixed up because it all depends on who has done a better job of interpreting the rules?
I think it could be an opportunity, but it works in both directions, because the regulations are really so different. A lot has changed, especially on the engine side, so from that point of view it's impossible to predict anything. I'm sure there's an opportunity to do something special, but there's also an opportunity to make a mistake and to go the wrong way. We won't know until after the first couple of races.

Do you see reliability as a key factor that teams can take advantage of?
I'm sure that could play a role at some point. For now everybody has to master the challenge and focus on reliability and make sure they tick the box. We're all in the same boat there, the manufacturers and all the teams.

You have a new team mate this year in Sergio Perez. Do you get on well with him?
I look forward to working with Checo. For sure it's going to be a challenge for both of us: we are both in the early stages of our career – we're both entering the fourth year of our career, and we're hungry for success and highly motivated. It will be interesting to see how the year develops. It's going to be a competitive environment, as it should be between team mates, and I'm sure we'll push each other along.

What can you tell us about your choice of number?
Obviously we all had to make a choice and I got the one I actually wanted – the number 27. I'm happy, but it's not a huge deal for me. It's a nice thing to have but it's not the most important thing in the world!

Finally, how would you sum up your goals for the season?
I hope that we have a competitive car and that I can deliver good results, just like I did at the end of 2013. But again it's really hard to define and set the targets with so many question marks in the game. Obviously we want to do well, we want to score a lot of points and I think maximising our package and our performance is the main target for now.

A new season, new rules, and a new team – how excited are you about 2014?
I'm very excited. I'm joining a new team at a time when Formula One is entering an exciting new era, so I think that gives us good chance of doing well. It will be very important that we work very hard during winter testing to understand how everything works and how we are going to get the best out of the package that we have. I think that's the most important target for the testing.

What are you early impressions of Sahara Force India?
I find the team very hungry for success. They've had some good years in the past, but they are looking to move forward and fight against the top teams. I think this year is the biggest opportunity to do that.

Is that because the rule changes create a fresh start for everyone?
Exactly, it's a very big opportunity for us, as a smaller team, to really do well, especially in the first few races. We must make sure that we arrive in Australia in the best possible position.

Will reliability be one of the key factors early on?
Yes, I think so. Not only that, also the fuel management and how we maximise everything. The tyres are also going to be a factor. It will be quite interesting to see what happens in Jerez and especially in Bahrain in the second and the third tests, where we will get a better idea of how things are working.

You gained valuable experience with McLaren. Do you think you can bring something extra to the team this year?
Definitely, I've got good experience from my Sauber days and also now from McLaren. The experience of 2013 made me a better driver, more complete in many areas, and I'm really hungry for success. I will be giving my maximum and I'm sure that people will be surprised by what I can do in 2014. I'm coming from a very difficult season with McLaren, with a very difficult car, but I'm very confident that I will be quite strong. Together with the team we will all be working very hard to have the success that we all want to have.

Are you the kind of driver who can easily adapt and change his style?
This is Formula One and you always have to change your style. When you change teams you have to change your style; you have to adapt to a different car, and I think I'm good at that. I see no reason why I cannot take the best out of it.

You have a new team mate in Nico. Are you looking forward to working with him?
I think we are pretty close in terms of experience. I rate him very highly; he's one of the best drivers out there, and it will be very interesting to work with him and to learn from him. You can always learn from your team mate. I've been very lucky in the past to have strong team mates, and Nico is obviously going to be very competitive. I'm looking forward to working together with him.

What do you see as a realistic target for you and the team this year?
It's very difficult to know, especially with the new regulations, a new car and a new team for me. All I can say is the team is working very hard and we're going to do our best to arrive in Melbourne as well prepared as possible. We're going to be giving 100% straight away from the first race.

Finally, can you explain your choice of number?
It's the number I've been using all my career since karting. I've enjoyed having number 11, so I went for it, and luckily I ended up getting it as my first choice. I will be wearing it the rest of my career, except when I win the World Championship, when I will be wearing number one!

How would you sum up the overall look of the VJM07?
Apart from the obvious, it doesn't look hugely different, but it is; almost every single part is a new design, from the front wing right back to the diffuser. Its genetics still lie in the 2013 car, but we've had to achieve the same results in a slightly different way. The nose is a stand-out but from the nose backwards it looks quite similar. It's a little bit 'fatter' for the increased cooling requirements, but we hope to trim that out during the early part of the season. To be competitive we have to develop and because there are so many areas that need significantly refining, optimising the performance of this car is going to be a big challenge.

How key are the aerodynamic changes for this year?
The aerodynamic changes in themselves would have been significant, even if there had been no other regulation changes. There's quite a dramatic reduction in downforce, especially with regard to the exhaust – there's now very little you can do to capture the exhaust energy. That's a big loss on the exit of corners, so traction becomes a premium. That, combined with a change in the front wing width, has changed all the flow structures on the car completely.

Is the narrower front wing the biggest change?
The front wing change is significant; it's a completely different concept for 2014. Visually it's one of the biggest changes. That was a big task, rebuilding all those aerodynamic structures from the front to the back to complement the smaller rear wing. The loss of the lower rear wing, or beam wing, leads to a significant loss of performance. That lower wing helped connect the diffuser to the top wing and gave those two areas a lot of support. Without it, it's become very difficult to extract performance and it's going to be quite a tricky area to keep stable. So there was quite a dramatic loss in headline downforce numbers, while there was also a drop in drag, which has fallen quite dramatically as well.

Will noses be a key area of development?
Our nose is a launch spec and later we will have an updated front end of the car, which potentially is quite different. We had to take quite a pragmatic view of it and say we've got to go testing so we've got to get a car out of the door. As much as we want to push the boundaries of the impact structure, because we know how important they are for the whole car, we don't have the resources to push it to the limit in our first iteration, so we need a banker. The nose that is on the launch car is a banker. We've got ourselves a car that we can go testing and racing with. Several weeks ago we started pushing the design boundaries because we think there's performance in it. There are new concepts coming through.

Everyone has to choose eight ratios for the season. Have you simply followed the selection made by Mercedes?
Although our ratios are supplied by Mercedes we also did our own simulations, and to be honest we came up with very similar answers. We were happy to carry on that route. We are allowed one change and I think we'll wait and see how it performs and how it compares to our simulation. The good news is that lengthy ratio discussions (which gears to lengthen or shorten) will become a thing of the past, so that saves a small amount of work track side! The ratios look fairly benign, from what we can see from our preliminary solutions.

How hard has it been to fit the new power unit into the overall package?
It's been a massive job to accommodate all the changes to the power unit - it's the biggest change I've witnessed in the sport since I started in 1990. On top of that, if you add the development that comes with it during the season, it's going to take some managing. From the first time the car runs it will be continual development as we gather data, understand where the car sits relative to our models, refine it, and go back to the track again.

What's been the biggest challenge in terms of packaging?
Cooling has been the biggest challenge – most of last summer was taken up trying to understand the cooling requirements of the power unit, and how best to optimise it in the chassis. There's a lot more to cool and you are weighing up the performance of the power unit versus the performance of the chassis and aerodynamics, and trying to hit the optimum on each one of them. We've had to develop a completely new tool set to examine, analyse and optimise it. We won't get a real answer on how far out we were until we start running and then we'll refine the tools again and have another go at it. I expect quite a big redefinition of the cooling system later in the season once we've gathered all the data from the winter testing and the first couple of races.

What else is new this year?
The braking system is a significant change; the rear system is effectively a brake by wire. This means the rear brakes can now respond completely differently from the way they have traditionally done before. A lot of work has gone into this system from simulation, design to testing it on the dyno. However, we won't fully know how the system will perform until we get on track and gather some data and driver feedback.

How would you summarise the team's build-up to the new season?
We've had a fruitful winter, helped by the fact that we deployed all of our resources early towards developing the 2014 car. That may have impacted on our performance in 2013, but I think it was the right decision. From a competitive standpoint it's difficult to speculate because we don't know what the other teams have done. The regulation changes are the biggest in decades, which allows for varying solutions. It's tough to say whose solutions will produce the best performing package until we actually go testing.

As a smaller team how difficult was it to allocate resources?
The chassis is completely new and all the systems are new. As a smaller team you don't have the resources to do all the required experiments in order to give you the best solutions for some of the problems. Sometimes we have to take a best guess – an educated and scientific guess – as to what the solutions should be. When you don't have all the data, and when you are making some decisions that way, you could be right in your guesses. But if there are a lot of them compared to your competitors, it just introduces more risk.

Do the rule changes also create an opportunity for a smaller team to do a better job than some of the others?
Like most things in life, having more resources usually wins! We are competing against manufacturer teams with big budgets so you would expect their well-funded research will help them find the optimal solutions. But you never know: we’ve been focussed on 2014 for a long time and we’re pleased with the car we’ve produced so there’s always an opportunity.

Are you pleased with the progress made by Mercedes?
I think we've got a strong partner in Mercedes. I anticipate that they will have a very competitive solution and they are still working hard. I think in 2014 the power unit as an entire package will have a greater percentage of the performance of the car wrapped into it. If they have done a good job, and I believe they have, that should bode well for us too.

The team has changed gearbox suppliers from McLaren to Mercedes. Will it take time to adjust to the new relationship?
Initially it's an added complication, but eventually having the engine, gearbox and the entire powertrain come from the same source will benefit us and Mercedes. Brackley is only seven miles away from our factory at Silverstone and that helps if changes need to be made or if there are upgrades. But the benefits are more than just logistical and the fact that the power unit and gearbox come from the same source will help. It's a better solution.

The team put a lot of emphasis on tyres in the build-up to 2013 and it paid off. Do you feel you’ve lost out by not taking part in the December Pirelli test in Bahrain?
It's hard to know what those who tested learned, but I'm sure they learned something that we didn't learn, so in that regard we are a bit behind. Last year, tyres were our strong point at the beginning of the season and that didn't happen by chance. I think we have the correct resources in place to be able to react to the new tyres.

What steps have you taken to build up the team over the winter?
We've got a simulator that's becoming an increasingly useful development tool and the fact that we are doing four in-season tests means that we've had to look at staffing for those tests on top of the 19-race schedule. So we've added some resource in that area. We've also added strategically in some areas, such as vehicle science, and we've reorganised our aero department and added some extra capability as well.

Reliability will be a big talking point this year. How important is it to score points early on?
I think it will be a year of variability from race to race. We haven't seen a change like this for decades, so the teams that get on top of it quickly will have some opportunities early on, and as time passes we will all learn how to race with the new power units. There is a lot to think about: how to get them home, how to conserve fuel, and how to best utilise strategies in qualifying versus the race. We will learn from each other as well as the experience of racing. Those who get on top of it early will have an advantage.

Dr Mallya, how much are you looking forward to the challenge of 2014?
I always enjoy seeing a Formula One car come to life, but I can’t remember so much anticipation ahead of a new season. The rule changes have presented us with a huge challenge, but I’m very proud of the approach we have taken and the direction of the technical team. It will be fascinating to see how different teams have interpreted the rules and at this stage it’s impossible to predict who has done the best job. It’s this uncertainty that should make for a very entertaining season of racing, which is great news for the fans.

Despite all the uncertainty you must have a goal in mind for 2014?
We’ve got to aim higher than last year. It’s an ambitious goal, but I believe it’s a realistic one because we have to look forward and take the fight to the teams ahead of us. We have the key elements in place to continue moving forward, such as our expanded agreement with Mercedes-Benz to include the complete power unit and gearbox. As I’ve said before, I believe they represent the best partner to work with in this new era of Formula One. Combined with our strong driver line-up there is definitely the potential for 2014 to be our strongest season yet.

Talking of the drivers, you’ve signed up two of the most promising young talents on the grid. You must be delighted…
I’m very happy to have such an exciting pairing of Nico and Checo. My philosophy has always been to choose drivers based on their speed and ability to perform, and we've done that again this year. Nico has been with us before, so we understand him and know how quick he is. It's great to have him back. As for Sergio, he’s an exceptionally talented driver who I have watched carefully over the last three years. He’s clearly got incredible speed and at just 23 has great potential. As a combination we thought they would make a strong pairing. Nico will be a good benchmark for Sergio, and vice versa, and they will bring out the best in each other.

The car has a new look to go with the new driver line-up. What is the thinking behind the new paint scheme?
The new car livery reflects the way Sahara Force India is evolving. I’ve always believed the saffron, white and green livery has made our cars the most eye-catching, but adding black as a main colour gives us a fierce new look. The national colours of India remain an integral part of the car, but the tiger has become a panther! As we enter our seventh season with new partnerships and new names on the car, our contemporary new look helps signal our ambition.