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Perez confident of McLaren win

MONTE CARLO, Monaco - McLaren can win races this season despite its cars still being some way off the pace.

So says Mexican driver Sergio Perez: "That's the target... to win a race or a couple of races."

He was speaking here ahead of the Monaco Formula 1 GP, the street track where in 2012 he set the fastest lap in a Sauber.

TEAM IS LOST

"We know that at the moment there's no chance, no way, we can think of that but we have to give our best... nobody in the team is giving up. I'm very proud of my whole team that they are not giving up and I am sure we will win some races this year."

McLaren finished 2012 with the fastest cars and Jenson Button won the season-ender in Brazil but the team lost its way during the European winter and produced a chassis that has been seconds off the pace - an eternity in F1 where laps are timed in thousandths of a second.

Button and Perez have 29 points between them - 60 less than Red Bull's triple champion Sebastian Vettel alone has scored from the five races so far. The team is sixth in the standings, behind even Force India which also uses Mercedes engines and has a far smaller budget.

'WE WERE FAR AWAY'

Perez, who moved to McLaren from Sauber to replace departed 2008 champion Lewis Hamilton, believed it would take the team several more races to reduce the gap to the front runners.

"In Barcelona we were far away," he said. "I expect a couple of races to turn everything around though it's difficult to say that we are going to be on the podium for the British GP (June 30) but McLaren is a great team and working flat out.

"If we can be on the podium in Silverstone we can be very happy and then win some races after that."

Stay with Wheels24 for the 2013 Formula 1 season – fresh reports every day.
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