Perez: Low-grip Miami track felt like driving on 'inters'

Sergio Perez echoed his colleagues' concerns over Miami's low-grip track surface after Friday's opening day of running in Miami, saying that conditions felt like running on intermediate tyres.

Last year's inaugural event at the Miami International Autodrome saw parts of the limestone and granite-composed track surface break up even before F1's cars took to the circuit.

It was therefore decided to resurface the track for F1's second visit to Florida's Magic City this weekend.

The layout's new asphalt has led to a much faster track, but grip is nevertheless at a premium in certain areas and especially off the racing line, as Charles Leclerc and Nico Hulkenberg experienced on Friday.

"The conditions out there are very low grip, especially in FP1," explained Perez. "It felt like inter conditions pretty much. We were measuring wet conditions to inter conditions.

Perez concluded FP1 outside of the top ten in eleventh place but the Mexican progressed to P4 in FP2.

Last weekend's Azerbaijan Grand Prix winner reckoned that his relatively disappointing performances were linked in large part to the track's grip conditions.

Yeah, the conditions…" he added. "Getting a read on these low-grip conditions, especially with the things that we've tried on FP1 [wasn't easy]."

• Read also: Leclerc caught out by Miami track surface in FP2

Mercedes' George Russell, who topped the timesheets in FP1, fears drivers will be heading into Sunday's race without really knowing what to expect due to the low-grip conditions.

“We’ll go into Sunday a bit of an unknown with the track being resurfaced," he said. "It's still not performing like any other circuit. So, it's a true outlier here, which is cool in some regards.

“It can be really difficult to race because you can't drive off-line

"You’ve seen with a few people, myself included, you put one wheel off and there's no grip whatsoever."

Miami's track will continue to 'rubber in' on Saturday, which should improve grip.

But Russell's Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton warned that keeping tyres in "the right spot" in Sunday's race will be a challenge.

"The grip is really quite low on this new circuit," he said. "It's interesting to see some of the offs. It is slippery, particularly for the rear end.

"A lot of sliding for a lot of people and including me, and so lots of overheating of the tyres.

"We're just trying to find that balance that keeps the tyres somehow in the right spot, but they're generally always over the peak of the temperatures."

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