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Perez concerned by unexplained performance problem

Sergio Perez says he is concerned by a lack of rear load which hampered his performance running during Friday practice for the Mexican Grand Prix.

Nico Hulkenberg was sixth fastest between the two Red Bull drivers in FP2 despite setting his best time on the soft tyre, compared to supersofts for the other ten teams. Perez was also running on the softs but was a second slower than his team-mate and he says there is currently no explanation for the cause of his lack of performance.

Asked if Hulkenberg's time gives cause for optimism, Perez replied: "Yeah definitely, I think we are very optimistic.

"On my side I’m a bit concerned because we can see I’m not generating on my performance run enough rear temperature on the tyre and we don’t know why. We see less load but we don’t understand why. We have checked the car and there is nothing wrong with it so I’m a bit concerned by that but I fully trust my team that we will figure out what’s wrong at the moment.”

Asked if he only sees the problem on the timing screens or also feels it in the car, Perez says it is easily noticeable to him.

“No, I also have a big feeling in the car. One second around the track is a massive amount so there’s definitely something going on that we cannot understand today.”

With Hulkenberg having split the Red Bulls, Perez is wary of whether the true pace has been shown but is confident of a strong performance from Force India in qualifying.

“We obviously don’t know their programs and I think probably they didn't get the best lap out there. Certainly on the long run they look a bit better but who knows? I think we can be fighting for a great position."

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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.