Sergio Perez admitted that he messed up in F1 Imola GP and was sorry to his team, as Christian Horner backs him to come good.
After the qualifying debacle in Bahrain, Red Bull’s Perez fought back well in the grand prix. It was opposite in Imola, where the Mexican F1 driver had a solid qualifying, but struggled in the grand prix in mixed conditions, to keep the car steady on track.
Perez had multiple offs and spins, where one led to a penalty after he overtook cars behind the safety car, while another cost him a chance to fight for podium, as he fell back in the order. While Max Verstappen won, he ended up outside the points.
Post-race, Perez admitted to difficulties in getting the right temperature in the car. “Very, very sorry to my team, because I wasn’t there in the race,” he said. “The conditions was very poor. I forgot to put any temperature into the tyres. Even behind the safety car, I went off and then I got the penalty.
“At the end, I think, we should have finished on the podium but unfortunately, I did that mistake and that was very costly. We have to understand the car a little bit better and find out what was the issue with the tyre temperature,” summed up Perez, whose team boss Horner backed him up to come good despite the troubles.
“It is just time in the seat, it’s different to what he’s used to,” said Horner. “He did a mega job in qualifying to put it on the front row only just missed out on that pole position and there’s great races to come from in the future. We can see in clean air his pace was strong he just got caught in that DRS train at the end there but yeah, it was a tough day for all.”
Here’s the spin under the safety car: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2021/4/2021_Emilia_Romagna_Grand_Prix__Perez_gets_10-second_penalty_for_Safety_Car_overtake.html
Here’s the spin after re-start: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2021/4/2021_Emilia_Romagna_Grand_Prix__Sergio_Perez_spins_out_of_P4.html
Here’s Max Verstappen on how he spun
Here’s Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen on Lap 1 contact