P7 was best Force India could do, says Perez

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A solid day's work on Sunday saw both Force India cars make it to the finish. Sergio Perez finished in seventh place, but was a lap down from the race winner.

"Finishing P7 was probably the maximum we could have got today," the Mexican driver insisted after the Australian Grand Prix.

"I am very pleased with the result and I don’t believe there is anything we could have done better today.

"The team had to make all the right calls to get this result," he continued. "I think we beat them due to a good call from the team with the strategy and good management of the tyres. But I think we should have been in front of all them."

Perez was one of the few drivers to manage to overtake rivals on track rather than relying on pit stop strategy to improve his position. He managed to pull off passes on both the Toro Rosso cars of Daniil Kvyat and Carlos Sainz.

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"It's not easy to overtake," Perez said. "With Kvyat he gave me enough room but you feel so big.

"When Kvyat was behind me, one second quicker than me, I knew he wasn't going to get me back," he added. "Once I overtook Sainz it was a very good race.

"Once I was in clean air I felt I was in a very strong position. Driving these cars is so much fun. You can push a lot harder than in the past and I was doing my fastest laps towards the end of the race.

Overall Perez thought that the season opener was a good way to start Force India's 2017 campaign.

"We're not where we would like to be in terms of pace but I think there are plenty of things to be improved.

"We know we still need to improve this car and there is more performance to come. But this is a positive start to our season, and we can be happy this evening."

GALLERY: all the pics from Sunday's action

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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.