Sergio Perez says Racing Point is “finding performance” after another impressive practice day for the Styrian Grand Prix.
The Mexican would lead the first session at the Red Bull Ring before finishing third behind Max Verstappen and Valtteri Bottas in the afternoon.
Once again those results highlighted the gains Racing Point have made thanks to their so-called ‘Pink Mercedes’, though Perez was somewhat understated when suggesting their potential.
“It’s been a promising day. We’ve been chipping away and learning about our car, and that’s been positive so far – exploring where we can make improvements and find performance,” he told the team’s website.
“It’s very close among the top teams, but we’ve shown that both cars are in the mix for points, just like we were last weekend.
“Obviously, there’s signs of wet weather tomorrow so let’s wait and see what happens in qualifying.”
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More broadly, ‘Checo’ is happy to be back with a car that is allowing him to show his pace near the front of the grid.
“Throughout my whole career I don’t think I’ve ever had the opportunity to do it,” he said of being able to fight with the leading teams.
“It’s the first time we’ve had a competitive package in our hands from race one. It’s something we can work on
“There is a good development package coming later on, so we certainly feel very confident. We’re not on our nails all the time, so it’s certainly something great.
“I’ve been with these guys for so many years, and it’s great to see we finally have a competitive package where we can fight.”
Their controversial car though has continued to get the attention of their midfield rivals with McLaren once again believing the Silverstone-based squad could be out of reach.
“If you look at the cars in front of us, I think we have seen [for] the first time that Racing Point could actually show the potential of the one-year-old Mercedes,” F1 team boss Andreas Seidl told Sky Sports.
“That was definitely a lap time we could not do, but it was a good session for us.
“At the same time there is at least one car on the Racing Point side that we can fight (Lance Stroll), and as we know also in the race anything can happen.
“We saw last weekend that we were not as strong on Friday and could fight them on Sunday, and we will try again.”