BWT Racing Point Formula One Team will be looking to have a strong qualifying session at the Autodromo Internazionale del Mugello on a circuit which Sergio Pérez believes track position is everything.
Pérez has largely been the talk of the weekend. He announced on Thursday night that he will not be continuing his journey with Racing Point after the 2020 season. It only took the team less than 24 hours to announce his replacement in Sebastian Vettel.
Now all eyes will be on the Mexican driver to perform. Unfortunately, he got himself into a small collision with Kimi Räikkönen when leaving the pit lane and will take a one-place grid penalty on Sundays race.
“I’ve enjoyed driving around this track: there is no room for mistakes and that’s really fun. The run-off here is very close to the track, so the pressure is on the drivers, and that’s how it should be,” said Pérez.
“The car is feeling good and we focused a bit more on our race pace today. It was a shame to have had the collision with Kimi though. It’s very tough to see another car when you’re coming out of the pit lane and the angle to re-join the track is difficult too.
“I knew he was close, but it’s very difficult to judge the distance between cars and I couldn’t avoid him sadly. It just shows that it’s going to be tricky on this narrow circuit this weekend and we know that track position is going to be very important here. We need to aim for a good result in qualifying first of all, to make sure we’re in a position to fight for good points on Sunday.”
“Mugello is such an impressive circuit in a Formula 1 car” – Lance Stroll
Team-mate Lance Stroll cannot wait to tackle the ‘impressive’ Mugello circuit tomorrow when the car is all primed for qualifying.
Despite not finishing inside the top ten in either Friday session, the Canadian driver has been happy with his performance so far and believes he’s got a fighting chance for a good track position tomorrow.
Stroll said: “It was a positive day out there for us and the car is feeling good, so I’m happy with today’s work. Mugello is such an impressive circuit in a Formula 1 car and the speed in some of the high-speed corners is amazing. I can’t wait to tackle the circuit in qualifying on low fuel when we can really push hard.
“Qualifying is going to be so important here as I think the race will be largely dependent on track position because overtaking will be very difficult. We’ll focus overnight on making sure we come back tomorrow ready to fight for a good starting spot and go from there. The long-run pace is looking positive, so now we need to show our one-lap pace.”
