Sergio Perez had multiple issues to get through in his recovery drive in F1 Italian GP which compromised a quick and better fight through.
The F1 Italian GP for Red Bull’s Perez was already compromised by power unit penalty, where he had to start from the back along with others like Carlos Sainz and Lewis Hamilton. It was the Spaniard who made a quick progress, followed by the Mexican.
However, the Red Bull driver’s progress was hampered by multiple issues which allowed Sainz to get himself in a better position. Debris in his front-right brake forced him to pit early and drive cautiously with smoke blowing for several laps before it cooling down.
This allowed Hamilton to get him which dropped Perez to sixth behind Sainz and the Brit. “It was very frustrating,” he said to media. “My race got compromised fairly early with the front disc being on fire, basically. And we had to anticipate quite a lot the stop. And yeah, that meant that compromised the whole race basically.
“And then when I was on the hard I had to manage massively the brakes, because it was very critical at those points, because otherwise we could have lost them. And then just said everything got to compromised. In the end, we boxed thinking that we were going to get back Lewis on the soft, but unfortunately, the safety car meant that we didn’t get this chance,” summed up Perez, who elaborated on how he handled the brake trouble.
“Basically in the beginning, I was doing massive lift and coast,” said Perez. “I was losing a lot of lap time. So everything just got compromised on that first stint. The brake fire was I think around that point of my first stop, a lap or two [before].”
Team boss Christian Horner echoed the sentiments of Perez, as he noted that the brake issue was getting into a danger zone for them to continue. They couldn’t get the debris off and had to eventually wait for it to burn off and the temperature to come down.
“On the first lap, he had a big lock-up, it was the second lap, with Carlos,” said Horner. “And then he had a massive vibration as a result when we were started getting into the danger zones in our thresholds. So that’s why we pitted him onto the hard. We saw some debris also gone into the duct, which was why that front right was smoking quite a lot.
“And obviously it did take a little while for that to burn off over the next couple of laps and the temperatures came back under control and he was able to push on. And his pace again was great today, and I think he would have caught Lewis in those remaining laps. But, you know, we didn’t get to see it,” summed up Horner.
Here’s Max Verstappen, Charles Leclerc on booing, flares
Here’s Max Verstappen, Christian Horner on Italian GP
