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Sergio Perez has doubts over Racing Point's prospects for the rest of the Bahrain Grand Prix weekend.
The Mexican ended the second practice session in 14th, 1.8 seconds down on Sebastian Vettel, who topped the timesheets.
Perez admits that the team doesn't have a lot of time left over to bring to Saturday, but is hoping that it can find improvements overnight to keep it in the battle.
"It wasn't the greatest day. We seem to be further away than we were in Melbourne, but we are working hard and hopefully tonight we can pick up a couple of tenths with balance and maybe we can be a bit closer.
"I don't expect us to be in Q3 tomorrow unless like Melbourne, some teams get it wrong and then we can be there. It's looking like a hard weekend but we will try our best to see if we can score any possible points."
Perez admits that escaping Q1 could prove to be a challenge for the team in a midfield fight that is extremely close.
"It will be difficult [to get out of Q1], we really need to put everything together in Q1 to make it through to Q2, and then a perfect Q2 to be there [Q3]. We don't have a lot of time in our pockets but we'll see what we can do.
"It's quite frustrating, given the strategies and so on, it compromises us a bit. But what matters is Sunday afternoon and we will push to be in the points."
Perez added that the tyre degradation in Bahrain is seemingly better than previous years, with Pirelli bringing the C1, C2 and C3 compounds to the race, the hardest and most conservative possible selection in its range.
"Degradation wise, it's not too bad for Bahrain, the tyres are performing better around here than how they usually do, so the degradation isn't that high."
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C. Sainz jr
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I'll admit, I am kinda surprised to see Force India lower down on the grid, but I fully expect they will recover. It's not a fluke that they've been a consistent P4 as of late, and neither is it entirely thanks to the Merc' PU. They have a solid team, both in the management, in the driver seats and on the floor, and that'll show longterm.