Making one-stop strategy work is “critical”, says Perez

Sergio Perez says Force India compromised its qualifying set-up to improve its chances of being able to complete the Canadian Grand Prix on a one-stop strategy.

He expects a one-stop strategy will be the preferred tactics for most teams. “For many people it will be,” he said. “Whether we manage to succeed on that one or not, that will be a different story.”

Perez, who qualified 10th, said he hopes the set-up choices the team has made will “give us a lot of benefits” in the race. However he’s concerned they may have “focused too much for tomorrow.”

“The degradation is really poor,” said Perez. “It will be critical to make sure we complete the one-stop. So we focus a lot on that and I think probably it affected us a little bit.

“Today it was more painful than we thought it was going to be. But I hope we can get it back and the set-up that we did for tomorrow will give us a lot of points.”

Perez is the last of the cars on the grid which has to start on used tyres and is concerned about the threat from drivers behind who have the option of not using the hyper-soft tyre.

“I think the target is to be the best of the rest tomorrow,” he said. “It’s a long race, a lot of things will happen so it will be very important to be there, to make sure we do a strong first stint because that will be the key for the race.

“You have people outside the top 10, starting on another tyre, and the hyper-soft doesn’t last too long. it’s going to be hard for the top 10 runners.”

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