Sergio Pérez was not pleased with George Russell’s attempt to overtake after the French Grand Prix. In a fierce duel towards the end of the race, the Mercedes driver turned up on the inside at the Mexican.
Pérez then cut off the chicane, in his own words to avoid falling out. “If I don’t do that, it’s the end of the race for both of us,” complained the Red Bull driver after the race at Circuit Paul Ricard.
“He just went for it, while I was clearly still in it. He was visibly out of control, so I had to intervene,” Max Verstappen’s teammate looked back on the game.
The race management briefly looked at the incident, but soon found that no further investigation was necessary. Perez can live with that. “There wasn’t much to look at either. George went for it and I had to act on it.”
Confusion by VSC system
While the duel was still going on, Zhou Guanyu fell off the track. This resulted in a virtual safety car. When that ended, Russell immediately passed Pérez. According to Pérez, there was something wrong with the system that was supposed to tell him that racing was allowed again.
“I was told by the engineer that the virtual safety car was going to end, but I saw on my screen that it had already ended from Turn 9 when it was only in Turn 12,” he explained.
Poor weekend for Perez
Pérez then had to settle for fourth place, in a weekend in which he lacked some speed compared to his winning teammate Verstappen.
“It is now important to find out why and to restore it,” said the Mexican. In a week he can get back to work in the Hungarian Grand Prix. “Hopefully I’ll have my speed back there.”