Force India duo Sergio Perez and Nico Hulkenberg have urged the team to keep pushing after they moved 10 points clear of Williams in the battle for fourth in the constructors’ standings courtesy of another strong haul of points in Japan.
Perez climbed to third at the start before falling back as the team struggled for pace in the early stages, eventually coming home seventh ahead of teammate Hulkenberg.
After scoring some “very useful points”, Perez insists the team will need to maintain their good form in the final four races if they are to ultimately claim fourth place – which would represent their best-ever finish.
“I enjoyed myself today and I feel we made all the right decisions during the race,” the Mexican said.
“The start was good fun – I had a clean run going into turn one and ended up in third place. I tried my best to hold on to the position, but I knew it would be difficult to keep some very quick cars behind me so I needed to be sensible and choose my battles.
“Our car was very quick today and the two-stop strategy was definitely the correct one for us. It meant we needed to overtake the Williams cars on the track because they were on a different strategy, but fortunately I could make the moves on them very quickly.
“The end of the race, after all the pit stops, was just a case of looking after the tyres and keeping out of trouble.
“We scored some very useful points today – we need to keep doing the same in the final four races.”
Hulkenberg, who branded his superb move on Valtteri Bottas round the outside of the final chicane the highlight of his race, expects the battle to go right down to the wire.
“I am quite happy with my race: seventh would have been possible, but I paid the price of not having an ideal qualifying session yesterday,” he conceded.
“I had a good first lap, but when you start from the back of the top ten, you have a lot more traffic to deal with and that cost me some time.
“The pass on Valtteri was the highlight of my race. I had lined up a pass the lap before, but didn’t get a good exit from the final corner and I missed out in turn one; so I told myself “if I can’t get you here, I’ll get you at the chicane instead!” I pulled the move off nicely; it was a close wheel-to-wheel battle.
“It was important to finish with two cars well inside the points, but we know every race and every point will count from here onwards because the battle in the championship will go down to the final race. It’s going to be good fun and it’s a nice challenge.”
The Silverstone outfit have failed to score on just three occasions this season and are currently enjoying an eight-race points streak.
Both Perez and Hulkenberg have attracted interest given their consistently strong performances, with murmurs that the latter could make a shock switch to sleeping giants Renault for 2017.
