Speaking at the launch of Force India’s 2017 challenger at Silverstone today, Perez made it clear that the higher-downforce cars will put driver fitness much more in focus this season.

“It looks demanding physically,” said Perez of the VJM10. “It will be a nice challenge and put all the drivers into a massive stress so I am looking forward to it.

“I had to start quite early working on my physical [fitness] – the new generation of cars being so much faster is like going from GP2 to F1. It’s another step.

“Basically it will be a lot more demanding, the G-forces in the races we will develop with these cars are quite high; I have worked quite a lot in all these aspects.

“You have to have endurance and strength, and working in many different areas, you have to be strong and have the reaction [to be] ready for anything, so we do a lot of neck exercises, a lot of training and endurance – cycling and running, all kinds of things.”

Perez added that the strength of Force India has become its stability, which helped it overcome Williams in the race for fourth place in the constructors’ championship last year.

“It makes me feel very confident that I have never seen such a stable organisation,” he said. “It makes me feel very confident, knowing the right people have been working very hard – we started the season more or less okay, then we became fourth fastest.

“I expect to have a very good year with the team.”

Additional reporting by Jonathan Noble