Sergio Perez was left with a positive feeling about the potential of Red Bull's new RB16B after enjoying a short run at Silverstone on Wednesday onboard the team's 2021 contender.
Perez put himself in gear on Tuesday with a track day at the wheel of a 2019-spec Red Bull, but the Mexican and teammate Max Verstappen both sampled their new mount during the Milton Keynes-based outfit's filming day yesterday.
And an enthusiastic Perez was encouraged by his initial albeit short run onboard the RB16B, a car that Red Bull is keeping under wraps for now, with no pictures of Wednesday's run released by the team, a decision that has fueled a bit of intrigue about its new machine.
"I can see the potential," he said at the end of the day. "I was extremely pleased to come from the RB15 and already have a reference of how a Red Bull car feels.
"So jumping into my car, the car that I am going to be driving this year, it's incredible. I can just feel a step in overall grip at all speeds.
"I could already feel that. I haven't done a lot but I can already see that the car has good potential."
Max Verstappen insisted Wednesday's filming was about "getting comfortable" with Red Bull's new car rather than assessing its level of performance relative to its predecessor.
"Of course, there are differences," he said. "I mean, already the big change is of course the floor, they cut it a lot on the rear. So the car is always going to behave a bit differently.
"But it's not about setup work or whatever. It's just about getting comfortable with the car and get a basic understanding of the car. And then all the work has to be done anyway in Bahrain."
Teams will enjoy just three days of testing at Sakhir next month, or a day and a half for each driver. But Perez expects to extend his learning period into the first fex races of the 2021 season.
"It takes a lot of time to be 100% comfortable and I expect myself to be doing changes in the first five races of getting very comfortable with the car," he said.
"But I have to say that we've done a lot of progress on that. We've changed the seat. We have adjusted the belts.
"Every time we were doing something different. So that's the priority, to get me comfortable with it, so when we go to Bahrain we are ready to kick some ass."
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