Sergio Perez confident McLaren will win in 2013

Driver says team eyeing podium finish at British GP to turn things around.

Sergio Perez has said he is sure McLaren will win races this season despite the team’s poor performances in the first five grands prix, according to ESPNF1.

McLaren’s best result so far this year was when Jenson Button finished in fifth position in China, while Perez’s sixth-place finish at the Bahrain Grand Prix was his highest. But Perez is confident McLaren will start delivering good results soon.

“The target for us is to win a race or a couple of races,” he said. “We know that at the moment there is no way we can think about that but we have to do our best and it is very encouraging for myself to see how hard everybody is pushing back home. No one in the team is giving up even though we are not in the position that we would like to be in, knowing we can fight for race victories.

“It’s not easy, especially for a winning team like we are, and it’s not easy for myself coming into a new team that is in such a difficult position. But I have to say I am very proud of my whole team and I am sure that we will win races this year.”

Perez said a podium at the British Grand Prix would be a good start.

“It’s going to take us a couple of races. If we can be on the podium at the British Grand Prix we can be happy with the performance and then we can look to win races after that.”

Pirelli issues exit warning

Pirelli has issued a warning to Formula One that it could withdraw at the end of the season, saying it is running out of time to receive confirmation that it will continue as the sport’s tyre supplier.

“I’ve always said that we will never declare an internal deadline,” said Motorsport Director of Pirelli Paul Hembery. “But clearly time really is too late and things are getting extremely serious because the changes for next year are so substantial that the sport has to make a rapid decision.

“The longer this goes on, it makes our job impossible and there will come a point where you probably say we don’t have time to do the job anymore.”

Published in The Express Tribune, May 25^th, 2013.