Sergio Perez finished second in Baku, passing Max Verstappen on lap 15 after the team asked him not to fight with his partner. At a press conference after the finish, Sergio spoke about the key moments of the last race.
Q: Sergio, you got an excellent result! Can you tell us about the key moments of the race, from the start?
Sergio Perez: Yes, I had a great start – I immediately overtook Charles and was able to focus on my race. The outlook seemed rosy until the inclusion of the virtual safety car mode. Then we had a little misunderstanding with the team and we missed the opportunity to make a pit stop during the virtual safety car – it cost me a lot of money.
After the race resumed, my car started to have a very strong degradation from the Medium tires and we have yet to understand the reasons for this. There is no doubt that Max was much faster at that stage of the race. After Ferrari’s retirement, the main task was to finish.
As I said, it’s important to understand some things, and the pit stops weren’t perfect. I have to invent everything and try to improve in Montreal, including improving my race pace, but Max clearly deserved to win.
Question Let’s be clear: Did you want to make a pit stop at the time of the first virtual safety car?
Sergio Perez: The decision about the pit stop is made by the team. At that time I didn’t have all the information to decide whether to make a pit stop or not. I got this information when it was already too late to stop in the pits. Not only I make the decision to have a pit stop – unfortunately we had a misunderstanding at the time. Some moments in the race didn’t work for us.
Q: In the first round, you played 1.3 seconds off the pack, creating a lead over Charles Leclerc. Perhaps at this point you have overloaded the tires and therefore have problems with the pace after turning off the virtual safety car mode?
Sergio PerezA: This also needs to be addressed. At this point I don’t feel like I’ve overloaded the tires. At that point it seemed like I was doing everything right, but then I really started to lose momentum, but this was most evident after the virtual safety car.
Q: Couldn’t the loss of pace be due to your tires being very cold in the virtual safety car?
Sergio Perez: Maybe there’s a connection here. It is likely that the tires have indeed cooled down, leading to problems associated with tire wear. The exact reason has yet to be determined.
Max was a lot faster at that point in the race so it was the right decision not to fight him – I didn’t have speed and Max deserved to be ahead at that point. Besides, I made a pit stop too late. Several factors influenced the final result, but Max deserved to win because he was faster.
Source: F1 News
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