Sergio Perez admits high levels of Pirelli tyre degradation at Barcelona unexpected

Sergio Perez has labelled the levels of degradation being experienced with the Pirelli tyres at Barcelona "extreme" as drivers struggle to set consistent lap times during testing.

McLaren's new signing was speaking at the end of his second and final day behind the wheel of the MP4-28 at Barcelona this week, team-mate Jenson Button taking over the car for the closing two days. After the team had spent the most recent test days somewhat running under the radar, Perez leapt to the head of the timesheet on Wednesday afternoon in a single flying-lap run on the soft tyres - becoming the only man to dip below the one minute twenty-two second bracket so far. And while declaring that he thought the MP4-28 was "definitely competitive", admitted McLaren still had plenty of improvements to make over the final six days of testing, with finding more downforce a key target. "The summary is it's positive," he said. "Today has been a very important day for us because me managed a lot of mileage on the car and we managed to complete all the programme that we had this morning. So in that respect I'm very happy. And I think the conclusion is we have a lot of work to do before Melbourne. "It is the same approach we had when we started testing, I think we have to maximise every single change to get this car better before we get to Melbourne." He added: "I think the car is definitely competitive. We have no idea how the others are, the car has a good base but this base has to be improved for the first race. The team is working very hard to find more and it has to be our approach. I think we have to find quite a bit more downforce for the first race. "I think the car in general is quite strong, it has a very good base and a very good potential to be improved if we can make them work. It's very difficult to tell you that the high-speed is bad for us, or the low-speed [for example]. I think in general we have to improve our car."