Sergio Perez is beginning to meet what is expected of him as a McLaren driver, according to team principal Martin Whitmarsh.
The Mexican hasn’t had the greatest of starts to his season, partly because the MP4-28 isn’t a competitive car and partly due to his inexperience.
He has however begun to match, and at points, beat team-mate Jenson Button which proves he is growing with the team, added Whitmarsh.
“Checo is showing the intelligence and natural pace that we saw in him before [at Sauber],” he said on Tuesday during a Vodafone McLaren phone-in.
“He is growing in confidence. He is very young and relatively inexperienced.
“To put himself into daunting place of being a McLaren driver, particularly when we haven’t delivered a good enough car, there’s been an enormous amount of pressure.”
Whitmarsh expects further improvements as Perez continues to learn from Button, who is currently the most experienced driver on the grid.
“He still has a lot to learn, he is still more than a decade behind Jenson and you can’t acquire that overnight, but I think he is working in the correct direction.
“Jenson is a tremendous benchmark, the ultimate professional with more than a decade of experience, very intelligent and quick.
“So [for Perez] to come into a new team, with a comparative lack of experience, if you’re going to be a star of the future you have to beat your team-mate and he is getting stuck into that now.”
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