Sergio Perez’s negative streak continued in Great Britain. After crashing out in qualifying, there was hardly any improvement in the race. The positive news is that the car is still functional. Perez finished the Formula 1 race in 17th place, which is nominally second to last. He was two laps behind winner Lewis Hamilton. How did it come to this?
Perez and Red Bull try weather bet, without success
The race began quite unspectacularly for the Mexican. He survived the start at the back of the field without any damage and slowly worked his way up the field. But then the first short wave of rain followed. Red Bull boxed Perez, as did Charles Leclerc. But the track was not wet enough. The rest of the field stayed on slicks.
“We were out for seven laps and overheated the intermediate,” said Perez. It was only a few laps later that the rain started to get heavier. But by then Perez’s intermediates were gone. “When the rain came, there wasn’t much left of the tire,” said the Mexican.
On lap 30, Perez pitted again, again for intermediates. “We came out right in the middle of the leaders, so it was difficult to move up,” said Perez. “But I guess we had to try something from our position to get some more points.”
However, the attempt came to nothing. The Red Bull driver stayed out on the mediums until lap 39, before switching to slicks on lap 39 along with almost all the other drivers. Perez got a medium and was still in 17th place.
Perez tries to get the fastest lap, without success
But Perez was far from scoring any points. Red Bull tried to at least secure the fastest lap. On lap 49, Sergio Perez came into the pits one last time and got fresh soft tires.
After two warm-up laps, Perez started his attempt on the last lap – and was beaten by Carlos Sainz. The Ferrari brought the Spaniard into the pits one lap after Perez and also gave him fresh, soft tires.
Perez drove a 1:29.707 on the last lap, while Sainz burned a time of 1:28.293 into the asphalt. Sainz took 1.5 seconds off Perez per lap. “That was a very disappointing race,” summarizes Perez, but also sees something positive: “We had the strongest Friday in a long time.”
Whether that is a particularly strong argument compared to the performance of the last few weeks remains to be seen. After a long European triple-header, the premier class is taking a two-week break for the time being. This also suits Perez, whose points tally during the triple-header corresponds to his starting number: 11. “It’s good that there is a break now, so we can get our form back.”