Force India to try old rear suspension as it investigates tyre woe

Both Perez and Nico Hulkenberg struggled to maintain tyre life during the Austrian GP weekend, with the latter suffering particularly with rear graining and quickly tumbling back from his front row start.

Perez believes it is a mechanical issue so Force India wants to check the rear suspension, which was introduced as part of a big upgrade package at the start of the European season, to see if it is to blame.

It had been hoped that the change of front wing design for Barcelona would solve the problem.

"Our tyre life hasn't been good this year and we have some interesting tests this weekend on that aspect which hopefully can answer a lot of the questions," he said.

"It was a combination of the front wing not doing its job and now we have a new front wing which will probably help that.

"But also, we have changed some parts on the suspension, which I want to believe is the issue.

"We're going to try some different parts on Friday and hopefully that can give us good answers.

"We are one of the worst teams on tyre life, it's something we need to improve and hopefully this weekend we can do a good step forward on that."

Wind is often a problem at Silverstone and that is a condition Force India particularly struggles with.

"Silverstone is probably the worst track on wind," said Perez.

"Every time we have a strong wind, we seem to lose more than other teams.

"It's been the characteristic for this car for many years already.

"It's going to be a good test but I think we will move forward in that respect."

Perez suffered a brake failure on the penultimate lap of the Austria GP when running eighth and said the team was working to ensure a fix was in place in time for Italy, the next race with high brake energy.

"The team did not know that this problem was coming," said Perez.

"We are not measuring that part of the disc [that failed].

"Normally, it's the part that gets the less stress but, for some reasons we don't understand, in that race it got really high.

"Obviously this track [Silverstone] is very different as it's one of the lowest on brake energy, the next one coming up [where it might be a problem] is probably Monza.

"This is a lesson for us. We are going to change our measurements to be sure that we also measure the outside of the disks."