Racing Point’s Sergio Perez was left a little disappointed by not being able to do a huge amount of laps on the opening day of testing, but says he feels encouraged by the initial pace of the RP19.
Perez took a while to get out on track during the morning session. At a time when Mercedes & Ferrari were already pounding around with a double digit lapcount, Perez took over an hour to get out on track. Once he did, he was able to put in 20 laps in the morning session and a further 10 in the afternoon.
His best time of 1:19.944 on the C3 compound Pirelli tyres was enough to put him in P7 on the timesheets.
“It was a typical first day of testing, with a lot of checks and not a lot of running.” he said afterwards.
Having not taken the chance to carry out a pre-testing filming day, unlike several other teams, he says today served as the team’s shakedown run: “Even though the day was a bit shorter than expected, I felt quite happy with the car straight away. The mileage wasn’t great but I think it was still a promising start. I am happy with the performance we managed to get out of the car and with its balance.”
“The conditions weren’t great: the track was quite cold and green to begin with, but I end the first day feeling positive. It was important to start understanding the car as much as we could and for me to make myself comfortable with it as a driver.”
The team’s Performance Engineering Director Tom McCullough said: “We had some teething problems, which caused us some downtime across the day, and a small oil leak, but nothing overly concerning. Sergio was very upbeat about the initial feeling from the car and the baseline set-up so that’s really encouraging feedback.”
