Force India still struggling with tyre degradation

Sergio Perez banked 128 laps on Wednesday, and while his position on the timesheets was nothing to write home about, the Mexican felt his performance was promising.

Force India gathered another massive amount of data while it mostly worked on tyre management rather than outright performance.

"Mainly we were focusing on degradation as right now that’s our weakness point," said Perez.

"I think everyone out there is struggling with degradation points. We are exploring and trying to understand the tyres as best as possible because these tyres are quite difficult to understand.

Tyre degradation manifested itself last week for Force India, and while improvement is being sought, progress is slow, regardless of the compound.

"There is still a cliff in the tyre. But it’s not like before getting into that cliff the tyre is performing well, the tyre is already at a bad stage. Once you hit that stage you basically cannot drive, you have to box."

Regarding the relative performance of Force India's VJM-09 in Barcelona, Perez believes it's still seraly days to draw any conclusions, but insisted that historically, Circuit de Catalunya has never been a favourable terrain for the team.

"When you look at the Barcelona test, it’s been the weakest track in the history of the team.

"So to be here and to be more or less competitive, more or less fighting with the people around us, means that we have done a massive step. I want to believe that in the good circuits for us we can be quite strong.

"I think that we are where we finished off last year -- not in Abu Dhabi, but generally the last part of the year. If we can be there for the start of the year, and we have promising changes on the car, it can be a good year."

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