Sergio Perez admitted he was proud of his team for converting an eighteenth place starting position into a seventh place finish in the Bahrain Grand Prix to help continue the great points scoring run for the Sahara Force India F1 Team.
The Mexican had a disappointing qualifying in Bahrain, but the fight-back on race day into the points pleased the twenty-seven-year-old and the result shows that there the team has great spirit and strength.
“I said after Bahrain that I was very proud of my team,” said Perez. “We never gave up and dug deep to recover a great result. It was even more special because we continued our run of races in the points – it’s now thirteen consecutive races.
“When we qualified in P18, I thought it would be hard to do it, but we delivered a perfect race and really deserved this result.
“I think the start of the season has gone really well and we can be happy with the results we have achieved already. The team has done an excellent job to read the races, call the strategy and take the opportunities. That’s a real strength of this team.”
Perez finished on the podium at the Sochi Autodrom, the venue for this weekend’s fourth race of the season, back in 2015 with Force India, his second with the team, and he knows that overtaking is likely to be difficult again this season.
“I have good memories from Sochi and our podium in 2015 shows that anything is possible,” said Perez. “I think every driver enjoys turn four because it’s an unusual corner that puts high energies through the car.
“The rest of the lap is similar to a street circuit. Overtaking has never been easy so there’s extra pressure on getting high up the grid in qualifying.”
