Sergio Perez spoke after the first day of running at his home grand prix weekend, a day he described as tricky with FP2 basically lost for tyre testing.
Sergio Perez is targeting his fifth career win as a Formula 1 driver, and his first at his home grand prix, which would make him the first Mexican to fulfill this achievement.
He finished FP1 third fastest, and was fifth fastest in the second practice allocated for Pirelli tyre prototype tests on Friday.
Speaking at the end of the day Perez said: “It was a tricky day to get a read on things, as is typical in Mexico with the altitude, everything is floating around.
“It is very easy to make mistakes in these conditions so overall I think we had an ok day,” he added. “I think we got up to speed fairly quickly and got into a rhythm so it should hopefully be quite straight forward tomorrow.
“The tyre test means you basically lose FP2 but that’s how it is for everyone and in FP1 we got a good pace and we seemed to be competitive.
“Ferrari look strong, as do Mercedes, so it is going to be a tough battle tomorrow in qualifying,” the 32-year-old from Guadalajara concluded.
Max Verstappen survives a spin
Max Verstappen survived a couple a moments in FP1, the more serious one was a spin at Turn 10, but was lucky to escape without losing any carbon fiber from his RB18.
The double Champion said afterwards: “I had a little spin this morning in FP1, as soon as I came off the track it felt like ice and I was drifting left and right.
“On the soft tyres, everything felt okay but we only had one run on them. In FP2 we had to do the Pirelli tyre test, so it makes it a little bit more difficult as there are a lot of unknowns again, similar to last weekend,” he explained.
“We have very little information, but from what we tried; everything was working okay. Let’s see what we can do come qualifying tomorrow,” Verstappen concluded.
Verstappen will be chasing his 14th victory in 2022 and if he succeeds would break the old record set by Michael Schumacher and Sebastian Vettel of 13 F1 race wins per season.
New lids on show in Mexico 🇲🇽🇳🇱 pic.twitter.com/sdn9NFLNAP
— Oracle Red Bull Racing (@redbullracing) October 28, 2022