Sergio Perez says he will treat Lewis Hamilton like any other driver during the Turkish Grand Prix on Sunday.
Hamilton is involved in a title fight with Perez’s Red Bull team-mate Max Verstappen, with the seven-time world champion starting from 11th on the grid after taking a fresh engine this weekend.
Perez is set to take the start from sixth place, and can help Verstappen’s title cause with efforts to keep Hamilton at bay.
However, Perez says that he is concentrating on his own race, and will not make any extra efforts to retain track position over Hamilton.
“I will treat Lewis as any other rival out there,” Perez said. “I want to do the best possible job for myself and I will not make it easy for anyone.
“I really hope that Lewis doesn’t get me and I make enough progress early on in the race that I am able to be with the leaders, that would be good for me tomorrow.”
After ending the qualifying session over eighth-tenths down on Hamilton, who was the session’s fastest driver, Perez says he was “unfortunate” with his last lap in Q3.
“I am very happy with the way I improved the performance over the weekend.,” Perez said. “I think we’ve shown at times very good pace.
“It was just, I think, that final run in Q3 on the new tyres was a bit unfortunate because obviously we only had one set available for us in Q3 and I didn’t improve anything.
“I picked up quite a bit of rear grip and went into a lot of understeer and that made things quite a lot harder and given how small the gaps are around here, it made the difference. I am optimistic.”
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