Despite it being a comfortable 1-2 for Red Bull on the second date of the F1 championship in Saudi Arabia, the race of the #11 developed with some incidents that failed to spoil the second place of the Mexican.
The 34-year-old, who was third on the grid, fought Charles Leclerc for position in the first seconds of the race where the Red Bull driver took second place. However, the Monegasque recovered and got him back into turn 4. But on lap 4 with DRS on the main straight, the Mexican overtook the Ferrari.
“We definitely made some progress, and it is a shame we didn’t qualify on the front-row,” he said after the race at Jeddah.
“We had a great start, unfortunately, Charles was in the way and we couldn’t get through and it was a nice fight but a compromised race.
“With the Safety Car so early, it was a very long stint on the Hard, and it was tricky at times, especially in the beginning with no warm-up, and it took us a long time to get through Lewis [Hamilton] and Lando [Norris].
“But it is a great day for the team, it is a very different track to Bahrain, and we just have to keep this momentum going.”
On lap 7 the action was halted by the Safety Car due as Lance Stroll clipped the inside wall on entry at turn 22 and ended up in the barriers. The World Champion team called both drivers to the pits to put on the hard Pirelli compound, which resulted in an unsafe release for the Mexican driver when he came out just as Fernando Alonso was coming in.
5 seconds would be added to his race time — and that’s his eighth penalty point on the super license after picking one up on Saturday. The stewards determined he had left his box despite receiving a red light not to go.
Nonetheless, with the advantage he had at the end, it allowed him to finish 4.996s ahead of Leclerc.
On the penalty, Perez commented: “It was a shame that we got the penalty, luckily it did not hurt our race, but I think in this scenario, it was quite close to Max and everyone was coming in at the same time. We just need a wider pit lane.
“We still have some bits to tidy up. Our time will come,” he concluded.
