Perez challenges Cadillac to keep up the fight in F1’s development wars

Sergio Perez says Cadillac is developing strongly through its early races in Formula 1 but needs to ensure it maintains a good rate of improvement to stay in a fight with Aston Martin.

Cadillac brought its first upgrade to the Miami Grand Prix and Perez was fighting with a number of cars early in both the Sprint and Sunday’s grand prix, but faded as each race went on. That left the Mexican fighting with Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll, ultimately splitting the two Aston Martins in a battle he is enjoying.

“We're having fun with them, especially fighting Fernando,” Perez said. “It's always a great thing, because he's very aggressive but very fair. We just lacked a bit... I think we were degrading the tires a little bit too much and I think we chose the hard [compound] which in hindsight I would have gone for soft.

“So it's something there to analyze but at the same time I think understanding this package will be key to make some more progress coming to Canada because we need to understand this package more and try to bring better solutions. We don't have much time but I think one of the short-term things that we need to do is have better degradation. We have some ideas there but just putting all the groups together will be the biggest work in the coming weeks for the team.

“There is a bit of work to do there but I'm confident; I think we're heading in the right direction. I can see at times, as soon as the degradation starts to kick in, we compete with the midfield but they are just able to pick up the pace quite a lot.

“It’s still a long season but obviously we are in a massive hurry to find performance because we know Aston is going to be improving and we don't want to be left behind.”

Perez says there are other aspects above and beyond car performance where Cadillac can benchmark itself against the rest of the grid, highlighting its pit crew in Miami after both cars were ranked among the 10 quickest stops.

“It's a great motivation but not only them, it's just about improving ourselves weekend after weekend in all areas," he said. "The pit stop [in Miami] was amazing, really, really good job by the team, which shows we can do stuff, so we have to be like that in a lot of different departments in the coming weekends.”