SportPesa Racing Point Team Principal, Otmar Szafnauer believes his team have seen significant progress since they moved in a new direction with upgrades.

The team had a difficult start to the season, regularly finding themselves on the fringe of points, and after the Canadian Grand Prix, they went three races without a top ten finish.

With the team no longer struggling financially since the Lawrence Stroll’s takeover, it has meant that rather than suffering like previous years, they have been able to change the direction of their upgrades, and since the German Grand Prix it has been paying off, with the British team scoring a fourth and fifth placed finish at Hockenheim and Spa respectively.

In a preview issued by the team, Szafnauer said: “We’ve made some significant progress over the last couple of months.

“The new direction we have taken with the updates since Germany is paying off.”

Racing Point are planning on bringing further upgrades in order to remain competitive for the remainder of the season, but have confirmed their focus will switch to their 2020 car from the Singapore Grand Prix.

“We will bring further elements of our new aero philosophy in Singapore before we shift all our resources to the 2020 car.

“As ever, the middle of the grid remains incredibly tight.

“With the points being spread pretty evenly across a number of teams it’s not easy to make up a deficit, but we won’t give up.”

Racing Point are only 11 points away from Toro Rosso in fifth and Sergio Perez is hopeful that with this weekend’s Monza circuit more suited to low downforce cars, he will be able to achieve another points finish after a strong performance in the Belgian Grand Prix.

“We know we have the potential to be much stronger in the second half of the season and Spa shows what we can achieve when everything comes together.” commented Perez.

“Hopefully, we can continue with the speed we showed in Spa.

“It’s another very quick track and the car works well in low downforce spec.