Sergio Perez says the time spent with engineers post the Qatar race helped him to transform the season to end on a better note.
After starting well in F1 2023, Red Bull’s Perez lost his way and never recovered enough to pose any challenge to Max Verstappen. The Dutchman was sailing to a title win while the Mexican tried to recover, especially on the one lap pace side than race pace.
He was certainly struggling to even get to Q3 midway in the year. And in Qatar, he had his saturation point as post the grand prix, he flew to Milton Keynes to sit down and assess the things going wrong for him as he spent three days to sort out.
Post that, Perez reckons he started to recover and show pace both in qualifying and the race. He put the issues down to the set up choices and his driving where he couldn’t maximise his own potential and also the car’s to the fullest.
“I had a really deep [hole] in Qatar, where I went back to the factory for a week and went through in very much detail with all the engineers and we understood a lot of things that we were doing to compensate the weaknesses that we had,” said Perez to media. “We were probably taking the wrong approach with the car, trying to compensate them too much with car set-up. I felt at that time that I needed it.
“We were just getting lost weekend in, weekend out, so it was just important to step back and really look in detail. And I think since then our season has transformed completely. The downturn was basically what we were doing with the set up in few weekends. It was about the car and how I was making use of it and how I can make better use of it through the weekends, through different circuits.
“And I think I have made a lot of progress together with my engineer in understanding how to maximise performance of the car. I am aware of the downs we had, I think we have learned from them and I think that’s really good and really important and that’s the best way to look forward to future. This year has really made strong as a group my side of the garage as a team, so its been good,” summed up Perez.
After the round in Qatar where Perez finished 10th, the Mexican ended up fourth thrice and third once in the five rounds with one being a DNF. The two sprint events saw him end up fifth and third, as overall he did show more of a fight and push than the recent races.
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