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Perez casts doubt on reports of 2017 Force India deal

Sergio Perez cast his future at Force India into doubt on Friday after appearing to contradict his team principal Dr Vijay Mallya over reports that a deal had been struck for Perez to stay with the squad for 2017.

"We’re happy very with Nico and Checo," Dr Mallya told the Friday afternoon team representatives press conference at Silverstone.

"Both are signed for 2017 and really I have not talked it beyond that," he added. "In any case, we’re pretty early, much earlier than in the past because we used to wait until the onset of winter to announce our driver line up.

"This time, we signed both for 2017 well in advance and of course today’s announcement from Ferrari put to rest large speculation that has been taking place in the last several weeks."

But asked to confirm that the deal for 2017 was done, Perez himself suggested things were far less certain.

"Let’s see. I haven’t made up my decision on where my future will be. I want to take some time off and reflect on things over the summer break.

"I’m just saying I will make up my decision on what I will do for the future. I’m not saying that what Vijay said is wrong. But I haven’t done any decision on my future yet."

"Right now it is so intense that I don’t want to waste any energy, I want to give it all to my team because we are in a very important part of the calendar with three races in the next four weeks.

"That’s the main target for me, to give it my all, and come away from these three races with a lot of points. Then I will sit down with my people and see what is the best for my future."

Having finished twice on the podium in 2016 at Monaco and Baku, Perez had been linked with a possible move to Ferrari in 2017 but the scuderia's confirmation that they has re-signed Kimi Raikkonen shuts the door to Maranello and leaves few vacant seats on the grid to compare with the impressive form of this year's Force India car.

"There are so many questions that I need to ask myself and it’s a really important stage in my career. I’m not that young anymore, I’m 26, and the next years are the best ones in my career and I want to make sure I spend them right.

"You never know what is going to happen with the future. I am very happy with my progress and how I’ve been driving and there are so many important things and so many things that don’t depend on the driver. The worst thing I can do is worry about what seats are or are not available out there."

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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.