Pérez: Stroll has better race pace than my ex-teammates

Lance stroll made an encouraging debut for his first with Racing Point in Australia. Qualified only 16th after falling into traffic in Q1, the Canadian made up for it by grabbing a solid 9th place to open his points counter in 2019. 

His teammate Sergio Pérez, pillar of the Silverstone team since 2014, had a reverse mirror weekend with a good performance in qualifying, followed by a more complicated race where he found himself stuck in the peloton and 13th. under the checkerboard. 

The Mexican assures that the new recruit Racing Point is already giving him more trouble than talents of the caliber of Nico Hulkenberg et Esteban Ocon.

« In a way, Esteban and Nico had a quite similar approach and they always struggled a lot with race pace; of all my teammates, Lance is the one closest to me in this area, said Pérez from Bahrain.

This surprised me a little because it always seemed to me that I had the advantage over my teammates when it came to long relays. This is not the case now. Lance has a good understanding of what it takes to be in the game on Sunday. 

And he can do the job in qualifying too. This is good news for the team because in such a tight mid-grid, both drivers need to be able to score points. ». 

Pérez admits to having been taken by surprise by Stroll's natural burst of speed, masked last year by a difficult campaign spent skimming the bottom of the rankings at Williams. 

« As soon as we met, I was surprised by his speed, added the former pilot McLaren, who played alongside Jenson Button in 2013. This proves how difficult it is to judge a driver's raw potential in F1 because the results are so linked to the performance of the car.

He has the speed and the talent. He's a hard worker. I am convinced that he will score points consistently this season, which is great for the team. If we want to regain 4th place in the Manufacturers' standings, we must place both cars in the Top 10 each weekend. Lance extracted maximum performance from the car in Melbourne and maximized the result with the team and strategy. We need this all the way to Abu Dhabi ».

Clearly, the son of Lawrence Stroll, the new boss of the place, caught Pérez's eye.