Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsForce India

Celis wants to be considered for 2017 race seat

Alfonso Celis Jr wants to prove to Force India he is worthy of consideration for a race seat in 2017.

The Mexican youngster joined the team as a development driver towards the end of the 2015 season and took part in the Pirelli tyre test in Abu Dhabi before also driving on two days of pre-season testing this year. Bahrain saw Celis drive in an FP1 session for the first time in place of Sergio Perez, and with many more outings to come he wants to earn the chance to race next season.

"For sure, my personal goal is to end the year in a place where I have shown some performance and I show I am ready to be considered as a driver for next year," Celis said.

"[The target is to] improve step by step, it is my first year in F1 so I have a lot to learn. I have to be patient and improve each time I get in the car so that by the end of the year I can see an improvement."

And Celis says he hopes he will be close to the pace of the regular Force India drivers by the end of his final FP1 session this season.

"It is positive I could help the team, I did all the switches and the data collected successfully so that is the important part. The car is one piece to keep evolving through the week so a good first one, I just look forward to keep improving and getting close to my team-mates. Towards the end of my free practice programme, hopefully we are quite close."

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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.