Sergio Perez feels it is better to stay away from social media, recalling his clash with Carlos Sainz which left them both disappointed being good friends.
The loss of pace from Charles Leclerc towards the end of F1 Azerbaijan GP allowed his Ferrari teammate Sainz to catch him and Red Bull’s Perez just ahead of him. The trio went for a move on the final lap, where the Monegasque defended as much against both.
Going into Turn 2-3 section, Perez was mostly on the racing line against Sainz, who was on his outside. The two then made contact which was deemed as racing incident where neither could be blamed wholly. This was accepted by both the drivers too, who recalled their awkward moment post the incident.
They had to spend some time in the medical center and despite being good friends, it was lot of explaining that neither did what they did on purpose. There was also a head tap moment from Perez on Sainz’s helmet post the incident, which led to toxic social media take.
“I don’t remember it really. Honestly speaking, I couldn’t remember if he touched my helmet anyway,” said Sainz to media. “I always take a bit of time to get out of my car because I need to do my belts, the head rest, while some drivers prefer not to, the drink tube, radio. I always take my time, and I think he used that time to agitatedly come to me to say something — by the way, I could not hear what he said.
“We discussed afterwards, we were awkwardly sat next to each other for 20 minutes in the medical centre, both with a heart rate monitor and controlling our vitals. We were looking at each other and saying: ‘Mate, what the f**k happened there? And we were like: ‘I don’t know. But I promise I didn’t do anything bad to you, Checo. I didn’t close you off. I didn’t do anything.
“We were having this dialogue and trying to analyse what happened. And suddenly, after these 20 minutes, we were like … this sport is so s**t sometimes! How can we be here and missing out on the podium? We had the podium. Charles was dying on his hard tyres out there. We were probably both going to have a go at him.
“And we were both sitting there like: ‘How on earth did we manage to not finish in the podium?’ It was a podium coming — and in the end we kind of joked about it, so no hard feelings with each other,” summed up Sainz, as Perez concurred the thoughts of the Spaniard and gave his view of their interaction plus what happened with the helmet brush.
“I think it was just wrong moves at the wrong time and I think in the end it is just irrelevant at the moment, who is to blame,” said Perez. “In the end, we both ended up with zero points, damaging our teams a lot and it was something we were having a chat, and we were thinking the amount of damage for us, with especially Charles struggling so much, that in the end we should have been on the podium, but we were not.
“But it is irrelevant now, let’s turn the page. I was chatting to Carlos as he was looking down. I was telling him to…I was talking to him; I didn’t push his head. It looks worse on the video than it is; obviously Carlos is one of my best mates in the drivers group. So the last person I would have like to come together with is with Carlos. But we’ve turned a page.
“Once we took our helmets off, we realised that we screwed up, that finishing a race like that was really disappointing. We were in the medical centre, and they were both checking us up and we were all fine. We both wanted to leave as soon as possible because we were both super sad at the outcome.
“Like I said, the last person that I wanted to come together with Carlos, unfortunately that already happened, that’s behind us and I really hope we can both have a really strong end to the season,” the Mexican summed up. Perez also added about the toxicity of social media and how he stays away from it
“Social media can sometimes be very toxic in that regard, so it is best to stay away because most of the time people don’t know exactly the truth and the truth is we were both extremely disappointed,” he said.
“There are things [posted] like I did hit his head or any of the other comments I’ve seen, I have nothing to say about it, Carlos knows exactly and we actually walked together after it to the paddock and we were both just super disappointed with ourselves after such a race that we both did that we finished our weekends like that.”
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