Sergio Perez in fighting talk to Max Verstappen after impressive Italian GP

Sergio Perez has come out fighting after the Italian Grand Prix, claiming that fans will see his best form of the season in the final eight races of the campaign.

The Mexican driver endured a typically difficult qualifying session on Saturday afternoon, slotting into the starting grid behind his team-mate, both Ferrari drivers and Mercedes’ George Russell.

As Max Verstappen battled Carlos Sainz for the lead of the race, Checo was forced to stare at the rear wing of Russell’s Mercedes as the Guadalajara-born driver attempted all sorts of moves into the Variante del Rettifilo to get past and into P4.

When Checo was unleashed he showed plenty of pace, closing up to the back of the two Ferrari drivers after Verstappen had disappeared into the distance after capitalising on a lock-up from race leader Sainz.

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When asked by Nico Rosberg whether he can close up to Verstappen before the end of the season off the back of this performance, Checo replied: “Yeah, I think we’ve done a lot of progress.

“On the setup side, I am feeling a lot more comfortable in the car. So I do expect that we will see the best form in the next leg [of] races.”

Perez did admit that P2 was the best he could do at the Italian GP given his difficult qualifying, stating: “It was the maximum we could have achieved today, it was so difficult to overtake, a lot harder than we really thought. It was really insane because I had to use a lot of my tyres. In the end, we managed to get both of them.”

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If Perez wants to cement his advantage over Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso, he has the machinery underneath him. Team-mate Verstappen secured his tenth successive race win at Monza, and the Red Bull team remain unbeaten this year.

Speaking about his record-breaking triumph, the Dutchman said: “I never would have believed it was possible but we had to work for it today and that made it a lot more fun.

“We had good pace but they had a lot of top speed so it was hard to get close and get the move into Turn One so I had to force him into a mistake. Luckily it came at some point where he locked up. I tried to stay patient then just had to pick my moment.”

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