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Sergio Perez has stated that he is not focused on other contenders targeting his second place in the Drviers' Championship.
Speaking to media, including Sportskeeda, ahead of the Dutch GP, the Mexican claimed that he remains focused on his performance and maximising the potential of his car.
Asked if he was comfortable defending second place from other midfielders, Perez said:
“I am mainly focused on myself, there are ten races and I just want to get some victories and get that consistency that we’ve had in the last few races. The thing is that this is a very strong (circuit) and it is only going to help next year and thats my target.”
Perez admitted that he hasn't been able to maximise the potential of the car in the same manner as his teammate Max Verstappen. He added:
“Yeah certainly it hasn’t been easy for me because I know the car potential, Max has been exploiting that. But when you don't really have that feeling but you know when the car has massive potential, it is not an easy situation as a driver to be in. But certainly we’ve got a great race car and yeah we’ve just got to make sure we utilise it. Because you never know when you are going to have a car as good as this one.”
Perez had a slump in performances since the Miami GP, which has seen the likes of Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton get within reach of the Mexican in the standings.
In the first half of the season, Perez failed to make it to Q3 in at least six races. The gap in race pace between him and Verstappen has been huge. As the two-time reigning F1 champion stays on course to claim his third title, the former Force India driver is struggling to exploit the potential of the RB19.
Sergio Perez claims it is difficult to change his driving style to adapt to the RB19
With the RB19 having a tight front end, Sergio Perez has struggled to make it perform to his liking. The Mexican rued having a limited amount of time to be able to change setups during a race weekend. He felt that he was far from where he was at the state of the season where he was closer to Verstappen in terms of performances and comfort with the car.
On the challenges of changing his driving style to adapt to the car, Perez said:
“It’s not easy, not easy because with the amount of practice we have you cannot follow one direction or the other and then you get stuck with it for the rest of the weekend. So its not an easy situation for a driver to have.”
While Perez stated that the last two races have given him some confidence, he is aware that he is still not back to the form he showed at the start of the season. He opined:
“Yeah I really feel like that but I’m not where I want to be yet, where I was at the beginning of the season, where things were coming more naturally to me. But we’ve done a lot of work since then and I believe that we will only keep improving from now.”
With ten races left on the calendar, Perez is 125 points behind his teammate despite being in the same dominant car. He is only 40 points clear of Fernando Alonso and 41 points ahead of Lewis Hamilton.
Given the gap between him and Verstappen during the races, the battle for second place in the championship could go down to the wire.
