Sergio Perez says needs to change driving approach with McLaren – Formula 1 news
McLaren’s new signing for the 2013 Formula 1 season Sergio Perez paid a visit to the McLaren Technology Centre Wednesday and said that he requires to change his driving style now that he is racing for a top team at the front of the grid.
The Mexican joined McLaren after their driver Lewis Hamilton announced that he will be leaving for the Mercedes team from the 2013 season. Perez had impressed in the 2012 Formula 1 season with Sauber as he managed to stand on the podium thrice in Malaysia,
Canada and Monza. This performance from the 22-year-old Mexican landed him a seat with McLaren. Therefore, he thinks that now he will have to change his racing approach.
“I think the approach this year is different,” he said. “At Sauber the approach was always to maximise the race potential and not so much the qualifying, here the target is to be pole position and win the race. Normally the fastest strategy is the one where
you are pushing all the time and in that respect I will try to help with my style and my understanding of the tyres, but the approach needs to be different. We have to attack qualifying a lot more and extract the maximum from the race.”
McLaren managed to show some really competitive qualifying times in the second half of the 2012 Formula 1 season but Perez thinks he will have to extract more out of the 2013 McLaren car. The Mexican needs to start learning fast with McLaren though, especially
since his form deteriorated in the latter half of the 2012 season.
He says he needs to take the positives from the previous season and learn from the negatives. But on the same note, he said that he will have to take a new approach altogether to be able to show that he is worth racing for a top team.
The 2013 Formula 1 season begins with the first pre-season test scheduled to be held in the first week of February. The first race though, begins in Melbourne, Australia in the last week of March.
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