Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsForce India

Perez: Force India can challenge Ferrari, Red Bull

Sergio Perez says Force India can challenge the likes of Ferrari and Red Bull if it continues to improve its car on Saturday ahead of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

FP2 saw Perez set the third fastest time of the session, with the Mexican driver ending up 0.6s behind pace-setter Nico Rosberg. With only the two Mercedes' ahead of him Perez says Force India has a chance of remaining in the mix at the front of the field.

“I think generally Williams carries quite a bit of fuel, from what we’ve seen on Fridays for some reason," Perez said. "On a Friday they carry more fuel than all of us. I think we can give them a good run tomorrow. I think Ferrari will be strong, I think Red Bull as well, but I think we can be up there fighting with them.”

And Perez says the headline lap time masks the fact that Force India needs to improve its race pace.

"The pace on the option felt alright for a single lap, it was a good lap. Obviously the Ferraris and the Red Bulls did their laps a bit earlier than us so there is a bit of track improvement there. But still it was a very strong lap which made me feel happy with the balance as well.

"Then on the long run we don’t have a lot of information as I only managed to do six or seven laps on the prime tyre, we lost quite a bit of information on the long run. Not so happy in the long run pace with the balance, so that is something we have to analyse tonight to try and get the best compromise between qualifying and the race because obviously the race is the main priority for us over the weekend.”

Perez lost out on track time at the end of FP2 due to a brake issue which he revealed was due to a strange failure.

“We had an issue with the pad. It failed and went up and broke the rim … rear left.

"It was old brake material. We are still analysing it because obviously it is old but it is not supposed to brake in that way. So it is something that we have to analyse and then straight away I had the brake-by-wire fail, similar to what I had in the last laps in Montreal in 2014.”

AS IT HAPPENED: Abu Dhabi Grand Prix FP2

Eric Silbermann's Abu Dhabi grumpy preview

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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.