Perez targets Malaysia announcement after delays

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Sergio Perez hopes to be able to announce his future plans ahead of the Malaysian Grand Prix after admitted there have been "delays".

The Mexican is expected to remain with Force India for 2017, after negotiations between his backers and the team, and currently has a contract to continue next season. While he had previously said he should announce his plans ahead of this weekend's Singapore Grand Prix, Perez says unforeseen circumstances have prevented him from doing so.

Asked when his plans for 2017 will be confirmed, Perez replied: “Well I tried.

"I was hoping to be able to be in a position to announce my plans for this weekend. Obviously we got some delays but I really hope that before the next race we can definitely announce where I will be racing.”

And Perez says Force India is his preferred choice at present, adding: “I always say that I will be very happy if I can stay and if everything is fine for me to stay where I am.”

Force India dropped behind Williams in the constructors' championship in Monza but expects to be strong in Singapore and Perez is hoping to continue a good run of form which has seen him score in all five of his visits to the Marina Bay Circuit.

“That’s the target coming here. We obviously want to close up the gap, we lost out [in the] the battle in the last race. We know they were going to be strong there so hopefully here we can close up and hopefully beat them.

"Singapore is a great place, it’s a very unique race, starting from racing at night, the way you get your routine, it’s totally different to a normal race. Waking up so late, going to bed also, yesterday I was running at 1am in the morning, things like that which don’t come at any other race.

"Also the track is a very big challenge mentally, physically, it’s just very difficult to finish the race not having contact or a crash, so it’s always important to make it to the end of the race and hopefully I can keep my good score in Singapore with the points on Sunday.”

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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.