LONDON, March 31 (Reuters) - Force India hope to take another step forward in Sunday's Bahrain Grand Prix and move away from Formula One's back-markers, the team's technical head Mike Gascoyne said on Monday.

"We will have several new aerodynamic parts on the front wing and new brake ducts in Bahrain, which should bring a further performance increase," he said in a team preview of the third race of the season.

"As we showed in the race in Malaysia, we now have a car that can race competitively and looking at the data from the first two races, it is clear that we have made a big step forward from last season's performance."

Gascoyne said the target for Bahrain was to make it into the second phase of qualifying after the slowest six cars were eliminated.

Italian Giancarlo Fisichella finished 12th in Malaysia and the team's billionaire co-owner Vijay Mallya said Ferrari-powered Force India were now genuinely competitive.

Predecessors Spyker, the team Mallya bought and renamed, scored just one point last season.

"When Force India came into the sport just a few months ago, some observers expected us to stay in the same position and just be happy to be on the grid," he said.

"These last two races have resolutely shown that we are not just in it for the taking part...we have done the maths, we have looked at the statistics and have improved by over two seconds from this time last year."