New Racing Point F1 car philosophy "a huge risk" - Perez

Sergio Perez believes Racing Point’s new car philosophy for the 2020 Formula 1 season is a “very good step” and a “huge risk” that is worth taking.

The Silverstone-based squad is gambling with its latest design by attempting to replicate the aerodynamic concept used by Mercedes last year, with its new RP20 closely resembling the 2019 W10 which stormed to both world championship titles.

Perez, who topped the morning session on Thursday and ended the second day of running during at the opening pre-season test in Barcelona second in the timesheets, was left buoyed by his early impressions of the new car.

“It has some similarities to last year, but everything is in the right direction,” Perez said.

“We worked very hard. I think it is also a very good step in the car, but as I say it is very early days and we have a lot of work to do in the coming days.

"To change that dramatically, your car is changing quite a lot. The way it operates is very different, so it is a huge risk, but I think it is worth taking it.”

Responding to comparisons between Racing Point’s new car and the Mercedes 2019 challenger, Perez replied: “I hope it will perform like their car, but it is still very early days.

“We have so many things to go through, the team is working flat out. But what is really good about the season is to finally have a car that is going to be very close to what we have in Melbourne.

“So that is a very positive thing. We can focus and learn so much compared to other seasons where we were always late with our car.

“Definitely the car has potential. So hopefully we can start strong.”

And Perez played down suggestions that Racing Point’s fast times were just glory runs to grab the headlines, insisting there is nothing to gain from completing low fuel runs during testing.

“In these tests you don’t even look at the times, or what is going on because 10kg of fuel is worth three-tenths,” he said.

"You can be at 100kg or at 5kg so it is a waste of time to try figure out, but the most important thing is that our car is performing well.”