Force India driver Sergio Pérez has insisted that the team is “not the fourth fastest” in the current Formula 1 pecking order, despite its encouraging start to the 2017 season.
Force India has taken a double points finish at each of the opening four rounds, meaning it has emerged from the ‘flyaway’ events fourth in the standings, with a 13-point lead over Williams.
Pérez, though, has stressed that Force India has been doing a “fantastic” job with its current package, ahead of the introduction of new parts in Spain this weekend.
“We are improving constantly but we’re not the fourth fastest team at all,” he said.
“So I think a lot of credit [has to go] to the team, they’ve been doing a fantastic job with the current car we have.”
Pérez explained that Force India’s upgrade package is designed to address the issues it has with the rear of the VJM10, rather than targeting out-and-out performance.
“Barcelona is one of the biggest ones of the year [for updates], and with these new generation of cars, we will be evolving the car a lot race by race.
“We’re hoping this upgrade fixes a lot of the issues we’re having with the rear of the car, we’ll see on Friday what it does.
“We’re optimistic, Barcelona is generally a difficult track for us but hopefully we can have a good Friday and make the most of it.”
On Force India’s updates, Pérez commented further: “We want to fix the problems and once we can get the correlation right we can develop the car in a nice way.
“For now, we basically trying to solve the issues, solving that issue is quite a big performance.”
