Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsForce India

Perez targets ‘dream’ podium for Force India

Sergio Perez says Force India can “dream of the podium” after ensuring he will start on the second row at the Belgian Grand Prix.

While Perez actually set the fifth fastest time of qualifying, he will start from fourth place due to Romain Grosjean’s grid penalty for a gearbox change. With the Force India looking strong at Spa-Francorchamps, Perez says the team needs to look at challenging for the podium rather than simply focusing on defending its position.

“That was a pretty good qualifying, not just the last lap in Q3, it was just everything,” Perez said. “My Q2 laps, my Q1 laps, I have been quite confident with the car this weekend. I think the changes we did definitely helped us and I’m looking forward to tomorrow. I think we have all the reason to dream of the podium, I believe we can fight with the Williams.

“It’s going to be a bit of a messy start tomorrow but we’re confident we can do a good job on that one. So I’m really looking forward to tomorrow and trying to get plenty of points. It’s been a difficult run up to now - the last three or four races for me - since we brought the new car. For me I’ve been struggling to dial in to the car a bit with the set-up and so on. I think this weekend we have definitely done a very good step forward.”

However, Perez admits he has no idea how Force India’s race pace will stack up against the cars around him after FP2 was interrupted by a number of red flags.

“Unfortunately we haven’t seen many long runs so far. I believe we can be strong, the balance was alright in qualifying, we know what to do with the car and we know what adjustments we’ve got to make. I am confident, it’s still a very long day to go tomorrow and the points are given tomorrow so we are going to be really up there to take any opportunity.”

Click here for Saturday's Belgian Grand Prix gallery at Spa-Francorchamps

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.