Horner: I’m proud of Sergio, he did a great job!

The Red Bull Racing team was unable to celebrate Max Verstappen’s second title in Singapore, which is carried over to the next round in Japan, but Sergio Perez took his second win of the season, which is also cause for celebration. According to Christian Horner, he is very proud of his rider.

Christian Horner, Team Principal: “Sergio Perez had the best race of his career! In difficult conditions he started perfectly, got into the right rhythm, worked carefully with intermediate rubber and controlled the course of the race over the entire distance. In particular, he acted correctly when the safety car appeared on track and during restarts.

In general, he kept complete equanimity, switched to slicks, but then he could not break free from Charles Leclerc for a long time. Despite this, he drove with absolute confidence and achieved excellent results. I am very proud of him, he has worked exceptionally well.

It was a tough weekend for Max, he started from a distant position, attacked with all his might, showed patience during the race, made clear restarts, but as the tire pressure was low his car hit the bottom of the track.

As a result, at one point there were problems with braking, his tires were damaged, forcing him to make an extra pit stop. And yet he managed to get ahead: it is clear that in the closing laps everyone followed the battle of the leaders, but the real battle at that point was between Max, Lewis and Sebastian Vettel. So Verstappen also had a phenomenal race today.”

Sergio Perez (1st): “I’m happy to win this race for myself and the team, this win means a lot to me. I haven’t been on the podium in recent races, but I’ve been talked about a lot and I’m very proud of today’s performance.

Psychologically it was not easy to maintain maximum concentration. The conditions were difficult, not everyone understands how difficult it is to fly in such a situation, especially in the last sector.

We had a little misunderstanding about the safety car going really fast where I couldn’t keep up and then slowing down where I could go fast. We ran slicks on a wet track and tried to maintain the temperature, which is difficult. When they told me the stewards were considering my actions, I attacked for 15 laps as in qualifying, trying to escape Charles as much as possible.

Max Verstappen (7th): “In the beginning, when I released the clutch, the system worked to prevent the engine from stalling, and now we have to analyze why this happened. In this situation, of course, I lost a lot of ground.

Then I tried to overtake, in several cases I succeeded, but then I got stuck behind a line of cars when everyone was warming up the tires to normal temperatures, and it became more difficult to get close to the rivals.

Of course I was lucky a few times when others made mistakes, and I was already fifth, and then I tried to attack Lando Norris. When I was already level with his car, I had to brake, and not that I was too late, but at that moment the car hit the bottom of the track.

Because of this I had a lot of trouble, but in that case I was driving outside the race track and there the track was apparently even more uneven. So as soon as I braked for the corner, the front wheels jumped into the air and the car just went straight.

I had to go back to the pits again, because the vibrations were very strong. I got new tires and from last place I managed to get ahead and earn points. Seventh place is of course not the position I would like to finish in, but yesterday it all started.

When starting from the fourth row, there are two possible scenarios: if you manage to move forward, then everything is fine; if not, you will be very upset, and this is just my case.