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Perez gives himself 6/10 at McLaren

Sergio Perez: "It's been an extremely tough year" © Sutton Images

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McLaren's Sergio Perez has rated his first half of the season as just six or seven out of ten as he looks to improve in the remaining races.

Perez joined McLaren this year but the team has struggled for results after significant design changes over the winter backfired. The Mexican has scored 18 points with a best finish of sixth in Bahrain, but says there is much more to come in the final nine races of the season.

"I have only done ten races with McLaren and we've had a very difficult couple of races so far, so I think the next ten races will be much better ones," he said. "If I had to put a number [out of ten] on myself I would say six or seven because there is good room to improve together with the team."

Perez said he has had to adapt to changing car this year as McLaren has tried to find solutions to its problems at each race weekend.

"It's been an extremely tough year, my first season with McLaren. It has been extremely difficult to get, first of all, to know the car. Since the first time I drove the car in Jerez to now it has changed completely and every weekend we are doing steps and on Friday we are trying new thing so that every Saturday we start with a new car. I think in general all of my understanding with the team has grown a lot since the start of the season.

"Right now I am in a good position to always try to maximise the full potential of the car and explore the limits and the way we set-up the car. To maximise every single bit because that's the difference between Q2 and Q3. We are getting very strong, my group of engineers and me, and I think we have a lot of room to improve."

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