Sergio Perez believes Force India is "a bit behind" its midfield rivals and is hoping a major upgrade at the Spanish Grand Prix will close the gap.
Force India is introducing a new front wing, floor and components at the rear of the car in an update which chief operating officer Otmar Szafnauer described as "similar" to last year's B-spec in size. Perez says the target is not only to improve the raw pace of the VJM09 but also address the way in which it manages its tyres after a tough start to the season.
“Yeah we’ve got a good upgrade, as expected generally for when we come to Europe we put a good upgrade on the car," Perez said. "We hope that everything works as expected, which generally is not the case. It will need a lot of understanding and learning as well as it is a proper upgrade, so we need to understand the package properly.
“We are expecting a good step. More than lap time-wise we are expecting the drivability feeling. We have been really harsh on the tyres and we feel if we can correct some of the characteristics of the car we can help tyre life as well which long-term speaking is a good advantage on tyres. So that can help us in managing the strategy better, going for more aggressive ones, stuff like that.
“Obviously many teams are bringing upgrades, we feel we are a bit behind our competition so hopefully this upgrade can put us another step forward.”
Explaining why the tyre life has been a problem for Force India, Perez blames the original front wing as being the cause of the issue.
“[The weakness is] because of the characteristics of the car. Basically we have a very weak front wing that was not working properly. We believe we have fixed the problem with the new upgrade hopefully. So by not making it work that meant we had to fix it mechanically and that meant basically more damage to the tyre.
"I won’t go in to too much detail but in general aspects the car was not performing as expected and we had to compensate by the set-up. So we were compromising the tyre life for it.”
With Alfonso Celis Jr driving on both days of the post-race test in Barcelona, Perez admits it would be better for the race drivers to have been in the car due to the upgrade but understands additional funding is crucial.
“It would have been good, but obviously the other perspective it’s good for the team to get some cash to pay for the upgrades! But we have great engineers and I believe that after this weekend we will have a very strong direction on what we need to do.
"I don’t see it as a big problem, I’m sure what they can test here will also be good and they will have good information.”
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