Hulkenberg says Force India needs to keep pushing

A major overhaul of its Mercedes-powered challenger for the British Grand Prix has left the team thinking it has a chance now of closing down on Red Bull for fourth in the championship.

But Hulkenberg is in no doubt that constant progress is needed to unlock more speed, as rivals will be making steps forward too.

"I'm very pleased with the B-spec update and happy with our performance across the whole weekend," said Hulkenberg ahead of the Hungarian Grand Prix.

"After the first couple of laps in the new car I knew we had made a step in the right direction and I had a smile on my face.

"We obviously need to keep exploring our package, but it was satisfying to get a good result at the team's home race.

"The engineers have spent the last couple of weeks digging deep into the data because we can't afford to stand still. We need to keep pushing in this direction and getting more performance from the car.

"There's a good feeling in the team and I think we can be competitive again this weekend. The low and medium-speed corners should suit us and the tyre choices are a bit softer than Silverstone, which should help us."

Mallya switches focus

With Force India having scored well in the last few races, team boss Vijay Mallya knows that it needs to keep its focus to deliver on higher ambitions.

"It's a boost for everyone in the team and we are moving in a good direction for the second half of the season," he said. "Over the next few races we will work hard to extract even more performance and build on this momentum.

"The double points finish at Silverstone has consolidated our fifth place in the Championship. We've picked up 28 points from the last four races and there is a good opportunity to score more points in Budapest.

"At the start of the year we said we would target fifth place in the standings and that's certainly an achievable goal. We are now looking at the teams ahead of us and will try and close the gap further."