Sergio Perez reflects on incidents with Yuki Tsunoda and Alexander Albon in F1 Singapore GP, with the two also having a say.
It wasn’t the best of the days for Red Bull’s Perez in F1 Singapore GP on Sunday after a bad Saturday. Having started out in 13th on the hard compound, the Mexican readily had an incident with AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda while tussling for places.
At first it looked like Tsunoda suffered a puncture when Perez collided with the Japanese driver while the Mexican was on the inside in the right-hander. But post-race, it was clear that the sidepod had a hole after the hit and there was no way he could continue.
Perez also had some front wing damage but there was no investigation by the stewards. “I was on the blind spot of Yuki,” he said to the media. “Unfortunately, I don’t think he saw me. And yeah, that just made things very tricky for us. I had a bit of damage on my front wing, front endplate. Yeah, it was just a complete disaster, my race.”
There didn’t seem to be a push from AlphaTauri either as Tsunoda mostly talked about the car damage rather than the move. “I had a good start and it is a shame how it ended up, it’s frustrating,” he said. “The sidepods are completely gone after the contact.
“There was a loss of aero and loss of grip on the [right] hand-side [meant I had to retire]. At least the car pace was good [throughout practice]. I feel bad and sorry for the team because I couldn’t extract performance, but I’ll just have to bounce back strongly in Suzuka.”
Post the Lap 1 dramas, Perez had a moment against Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton where he was frustrated that the Brit pushed him off but the place wasn’t given back. “To me it was clear that Lewis just broke really late and went off the circuit and gained an advantage,” he said. “That something that we got to understand going forward.”
But his frustration didn’t end there as there was a late contact between him and Williams’ Albon which wasn’t showed on world feed until after the grand prix. The irritation was more on the Thai’s side as not only lost the place but it cost him handy points.
Perez went for an inside move at the left-hander where Albon had already turned in while chasing AlphaTauri’s Liam Lawson. They made contact which dropped the Thai outside the Top 10 and he had to climb back up to 11th while the Mexican was handed a penalty.
But the post-race penalty didn’t mean much since Perez retained eighth after the gap he was able to build over Lawson. From the Mexican’s side, he felt it was more of a racing incident which came after Albon passed him while exiting the pitlane under VSC which was also investigated but the system did not note the positioning well.
“It’s a… we went and had a look and it should be just a racing incident,” he said. “Also with the Virtual Safety Car, I was ahead of him and Alex overtook me under the Virtual Safety Car, but the system is not good enough so they couldn’t tell at the time that I was ahead. It’s how things are.”
Albon, meanwhile, was livid on the radio. “He’s just so f****** dirty,” he said. “He tried to do that move to me two or three times before and I had to miss him. I had to pull out last time to stop him from hitting me. So sorry, but I can’t do that every single time he tries to take a lunge and take avoiding action.
“I thought he would have this one under control but he didn’t,” summed up Albon, who later on blamed Perez for the loss of points results. “We did the race perfectly,” he said. “I was running P9, was about to overtake Liam for P8, then I got dive-bombed by Checo into Turn 13. He T-boned me and I went straight on into the wall, I had to reverse out, I dropped to 13th and I finished 11th so we should have scored points today and we didn’t.”
Here’s onboard of Sergio Perez and Yuki Tsunoda’s clash: https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/video.2023-singaporean-grand-prix-best-race-start-onboards.1777388701653847993.html
Here’s collision between Sergio Perez and Alexander Albon: https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/video.2023-singapore-grand-prix-perez-and-albon-collide-on-lap-58.1777393550138091694.html
Here’s Max Verstappen on safety car destroying his race
Here’s FIA warning Helmut Marko in Sergio Perez’s case
Here’s Sergio Perez’s response