“We should have boxed on the Virtual Safety car,” Sergio Perez laments team’s strategy for P2 finish in Azerbaijan
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Sergio Perez
Sergio Perez the Red Bull Formula One driver after the Azerbaijan Grand Prix has somewhat criticized the team strategy during the race and has pinpointed the Carlos Sainz VSC incident as one of the reasons for his P2 finish in Azerbaijan.
Leclerc took a dive into the pits during the incident whereas Sergio was asked to stay out, the Mexican believes that was the point where the race slipped away from his grasp.
While talking about it during the post-race interviews the Mexican said, “To me, it’s first of all the communication wasn’t tidy today with the team, we should have ‘boxed’ on the Virtual Safety Car and our race would have looked very different.”
After that moment Sergio Perez was never able to get back in the race and after Leclerc’s retirement, had to settle for a P2 finish. In the closing stages, the Mexican was managing his tyres and thus was able to finish 21 seconds after Verstappen had crossed the chequered flag.
“My pace dropped a lot after the Virtual Safety Car,” said Perez. “I don’t know what really happened. Probably the rear tyres cooled down a bit and then they have compromised the race and Max was a lot stronger there.”
“Then we’ve had a few bad [pit] stops, then I was told to keep a certain pace once the Ferraris retired, so it was just a matter of bringing it back home.”
Christian Horner on Sergio Perez’s Azerbaijan outing
On one hand, Sergio Perez has blamed the team strategy for the P2 finish in Baku, Christian Horner the Red Bull team Principal, on the other hand, suggested that Perez’s race was compromised because of the rear tyre degradation.
while talking about the Mexican’s efforts during the Grand Prix the Brit said, “He was magic yesterday and again a great start, [he] went away very quickly from the field but then started to get into rear tyre graining earlier than the cars behind.”
“We can see he’s a bit harder on rear tyre deg, which is unusual for Checo because usually, that’s one of his strengths.”
“So maybe we just emphasised a little too much on qualifying on his side of the garage rather than the race, whereas Max’s car seemed to have much better deg in the race. And of course, the drivers are contributing to that as well.”
Next up for the Red Bull drivers is the Canadian Grand Prix and given that the Montreal circuit also shares similar characteristics to Baku, Horner has suggested that Perez and Co. are going to be looking at the data to get a better result in Canada.
“I think he will go away and have a look at the data from this weekend,” said Horner. “I think his engineering team will look at that also for Montreal, which is a similar kind of layout to this track for next weekend.”
Who according to you is going to reign supreme in Canada?
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Rishabh Negi
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