Sergio Perez says it was disaster to be stuck behind Nico Hulkenberg in F1 Singapore GP, as fastest lap discussions did take place at Red Bull camp.
After a good show in Baku which ended in retirement, Red Bull’s Perez did not start off well in F1 Singapore GP. The Mexican lagged behind in the order along with teammate Max Verstappen and in qualified, he paid the price after being knocked out in Q2 itself.
But in the grand prix, Perez made a good start to climb up to 10th in the early part. However, he was stuck behind Franco Colapinto in the first stint. They used undercut to clear the Argentine, but in the second stint, he was stuck behind Hulkenberg until the chequered flag dropped.
No matter how hard he tried to clear him, it just wasn’t possible in a disastrous end. “I think so, we had a pretty good Lap 1, but unfortunately, we didn’t capitalise on it,” said Perez to media. “Unfortunately, Carlos did the undercut on us and looking at it, given how difficult it was to overtake today, we really needed to be a little bit further ahead.
“It was a total disaster to be behind Nico for the entire race. That was quite a painful afternoon. I think we balanced it out a little bit better. Yeah, I think it’s a shame, really, that we just qualified so far out of position. I think, in hindsight, we know what things we did wrong, and we got to come back properly in Austin.
“I think it’s where we can show our true pace because the car should be a lot better in a more standard circuit,” summed up Perez, who had praise for Colapinto for his defence. “He did a fantastic race. He didn’t put a foot wrong and yeah, it was just very difficult to keep up with him at that time and it was just a difficult race, in the end we managed to do the undercut on him but that was the only one that we could do,” he said.
While the fastest lap went to Visa Cash App RB’s Daniel Ricciardo, Perez revealed that they held discussions too, to pit from 10th to aide Max Verstappen, but they ended up deciding otherwise. “I don’t know what happened there, I think the team was discussing it,” he said.
“In the end we decided to stay, it was one point anyway. At that time, the team was thinking about it but in the end, it didn’t happen.” For Red Bull, who are lagging behind McLaren in constructors’ battle, Horner reckons that they will surely need Perez to be consistent like he performed in Baku.
“Checo had a good first lap, he qualified out of position and then struggled to overtake,” he said. “He was struggling a little bit for traction in the areas where you want the traction out of Turn 3, and onto the back straight, but that was what he could manage.
“We need to have two drivers firing on all cylinders, Checo had a good weekend in Baku, he had a tough weekend in Singapore, we need to put some weekends together where you can see McLaren are putting two drivers on the podium, it is those big points that really make the difference, so we need to make sure that Checo is as far as up the field.”
Here’s Max Verstappen continuing his ‘protest’
Here’s Max Verstappen after qualifying
Here’s more on the fastest lap drama
Here’s Christian Horner on Daniel Ricciardo
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