Christian Horner had shut his eyes seeing Sergio Perez try some of moves in F1 Japanese GP, as the Mexican adds on enjoying those moves.
With Max Verstappen in fine form, Red Bull’s Perez mostly had to keep his nose clean ahead of the chasing pack to secure a 1-2 finish. It looked very likely that he would finish second as the competition from Ferrari and McLaren wasn’t hugely serious.
But Perez put himself at risk few times trying a move at 130R which raised eyebrows of his team boss Horner. While praising his consistency, the Brit revealed that he shut his eyes when he saw the Mexican trying those moves which was not needed.
“I thought Checo in particular has had a strong weekend where to qualify within a 10th of his teammate here, his race pace was strong, obviously, he had disadvantage of having to come back through the traffic…and there was a couple of moments where I must admit I had my eyes shut as he went into 130R,” said Horner.
“Do you need to do it there? Can you not wait for the straight? He didn’t look like he had three kids when he made that move. His confidence is high. He’s very focused on the job in hand, and he’s comfortable in the team. And he knows, he’s out of contract for next year. It’s his seat to lose; he’s very popular in the team and he has started the season in the best possible way,” summed up Horner.
Perez had fun trying those moves after a solid show especially after the struggles he had last year at the same venue. “It started really well in qualifying and in the race, we had a good start,” he said. “Unfortunately, I think we got caught out with the increase of temperature and I think with the balance, we just couldn’t get on top of that in the first stint, which meant that the degradation was a little bit higher.
“And with Lando having two sets of Hards it just compromised a little bit our race more than I wanted to. But I think already on the second stint things were a lot back under control, We were able to get a better read to the balance. And I think by the time we got to the third stint, things were a lot better.
“Regarding the moves, it just turned out to happen both at the same time. Spending time around one of the slowest cars, given the degradation they were having, it was quite penalising. So I was just going for it. And it happened at 130R both times. It’s good fun. It’s good fun to go around there with two cars,” summed up Perez.
Amid a fine run for the Mexican, he got into another bet with Horner where the Brit challenged him to better his qualifying result at Suzuka which stood at fourth. He eventually secured a front-row start but post the win, he asked his boss to pay the money to Bernie Ecclestone, with whom he had another arrangement.
“I had a bet with him, because his best qualifying performance had been P4 here,” revealed Horner. “And so I had a bet with him to put it on the front row. And somehow, having won the bet, he told me that he owed Bernie Ecclestone exactly the same amount of money. So he’s passed that on to Bernie, who was the beneficiary from Checo’s front row, so dear old Bernie is still making money while not even being here.”
The praise for Perez didn’t stop with Horner, even Red Bull consultant Helmut Marko also had good words while noting how the Mexican has adopted Verstappen’s set-up which has helped him this year. “Sergio is following the set-up of Max and that is the quickest set-up anyway,” he said. “That is what really matters and what is important.
“You can’t beat Max by having a different set-up. You can’t beat Max anyway, so that’s it. He now thinks ‘I just have to be as good as possible myself with this car’. His mindset has changed. You can also see it in these first races: he collected second places, one race he had some problems, but also in qualifying he was very near to Max. He is much closer than last year. It was important here because his race here last year was a disaster, so this is much better.”
Here’s Christian Horner, Helmut Marko on Yuki Tsunoda
Here’s Max Verstappen on his radio banter
Here’s how F1 Japanese GP panned out
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