Historical past threatens to repeat itself for Sergio Perez, however the struggling Pink Bull System 1 driver believes he’s beginning to discover solutions for his automotive dealing with points.
Whereas no person is anticipating Perez to run team-mate Max Verstappen very shut, the gaps in current qualifying classes and races are effectively past the Mexican veteran’s true tempo.
However that efficiency goes to must be discovered shortly, as a result of McLaren has now correctly closed the hole, and Ferrari and Mercedes are following scorching on Pink Bull’s heels too. Meaning any operational weaknesses – whether or not or not it’s automotive or driver associated – will now be relentlessly punished by the competitors.
Perez’s struggles aren’t new, as he went by means of the same tough patch this time final 12 months earlier than rallying in direction of the tip of the 2023 marketing campaign.
Identical to final 12 months, when Perez took pole, Miami was the final race he appeared comfortable within the Pink Bull, qualifying simply two tenths off Verstappen.
However as Pink Bull encountered a more durable run of bumpy circuits that uncovered the RB20’s major weak point, Perez was unable to drive across the points in addition to the Dutchman, qualifying eleventh, sixteenth, and sixteenth throughout Imola, Monaco and Montreal.
Spain was a return to type for Pink Bull on a extra benign circuit, however the 34-year-old nonetheless solely certified eighth, which grew to become eleventh on the grid after a lingering grid penalty.
Sergio Perez, Pink Bull Racing, in Parc Ferme
Photograph by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images
And, whereas he has lately secured a contract extension, which has taken some stress off, he’ll nonetheless have to up his sport – and quick.
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Perez believes the Barcelona weekend has given him sufficient solutions to take action and to elucidate why he struggled a lot to maintain his automotive balanced throughout completely different nook sorts and speeds, which is the holy grail of this technology of vehicles.
“I feel I’ve understood quite a lot of issues that occurred over the weekend throughout the race,” Perez stated after ending a minute behind winner Verstappen, having crushed the midfield Alpines to eighth.
“The steadiness was fairly off on the tender tyres, so linked to the qualifying points we had. We will come again sturdy.
“The issue I’ve in the mean time is that I can not steadiness the automotive for all of the speeds. I’m struggling fairly a bit within the medium to low-speed corners to have the ability to have the steadiness I would like with the rotation [of the front tyres].”
In an try to resolve these points, Perez and his facet of the storage experimented closely with the set-up between FP1 and FP2, with him admitting afterwards that these trials had gone too far.
“We did some aggressive adjustments for the weekend, which I do not assume labored, so we are going to overview these,” he added.
“We principally explored the automotive from FP1 to FP2, greater than [winter] testing most likely. We now have by no means swung round so many issues on set-up.
Sergio Perez, Pink Bull Racing RB20, leaves the storage
Photograph by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images
“We have been a bit determined to try to discover a steadiness, so we have to overview all of that, however I see the sunshine out of the tunnel.”
Barcelona being a part of a triple-header, which additionally contains this weekend’s dash occasion in Austria, affords Perez an opportunity to shortly transfer on and speed up his studying, though it will possibly additionally snowball in a destructive approach with restricted time for follow or evaluation.
“It’s the greatest [thing] you’ll be able to have, since you take this expertise as a studying curve and run to the subsequent one,” he stated bullishly. “There can be different challenges, it’s a lengthy season forward. It is very important be capable to maintain our head down.”