Perez 'to stay at Force India in 2017'

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Sergio Perez appeared to confirm paddock speculation that he is to stay at Force India for another season, after he successfully clinched eighth place on the starting grid for this weekend's Italian Grand Prix.

Although no official announcement has yet been issued, Force India's Otmar Szafnauer had told reporters that the deal to keep Perez at the squad for a fourth season had now been signed.

Asked by Sky Sports F1 whether the deal had indeed been sealed, Perez gave an initially indirect answer before finally conceding that Szafnauer was 'correct' in what he had said.

"I've been saying like for the last month or so that I'm very happy where I am and that I've already made up my mind, so I think what Otmar says is quite correct.

"Our performances this season show that the potential is there, " he added. "It was only the pros and cons with my partners, but Otmar if you said it must be true..."

As for his Italian Grand Prix weekend so far, Perez admitted that he'd been hoping to be closer to the Williams of Valtteri Bottas and that beating the Williams in tomorrow's race was his primary objective.

"We haven't had the pace all weekend. For some reason they seem to be quicker. Haas was quicker than us today. Williams probably was marginally quicker than us. So we're not where we would like to be.

"In the end I think we maximised the full potential with both cars which was very important. Hopefully tomorrow we can do a strong race, a strong strategy and try to get the Williams - that will be our target.

"I think in the long run we can be a bit closer to them [Williams], although the pace they showed on Friday was extremely strong so hopefully we can match them and get close to them."

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Sergio Perez, Force India, Italian Grand Prix

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.