In the sometimes sunny, sometimes rain drenched Dutch Grand Prix, Sergio Perez had pretty mixed fortunes. The Mexican grabbed the lead from his teammate Verstappen early on by being one of the first runners into the pits to switch his slick tyres for intermediates when a downpour on the opening lap of the race left drivers struggling for grip. He swept by all the dry tyre runners to build up a 10-second plus lead.
However this was undone when, on a fast drying track the team opted to pit Verstappen ahead of the race leader for soft tyres, undercutting Perez and seeing the lead change hands once more as Perez stopped a lap later.
A later rain shower saw him spin off at turn one, glancing the wall with the rear end and then on his way into the pit lane also connected with the wall, causing more damage that had to be fixed under the red flag brought out by a deluge of rain.
Perez’s wild day wasn’t over however, as he was hit with a penalty for speeding in the pit lane on his entry when he struck the wall. Upon the race resuming Perez was unable to pass a pacey Fernando Alonso for second on the road and eventually lost his podium position to Pierre Gasly once his penalty was applied.
Perez said after the race that the penalty didn’t come as much of a surprise:
“As I was coming into the pits, it was completely flooded at the time and when I broke I went straight into the wall.”
Questioned about his thoughts on being undercut by his teammate when the switch to dries started on lap 12, the 33-year-old was pretty restrained and wouldn’t be drawn into making a negative comment regarding the decision:
“In those scenarios the team has more information than we do at the time so it is something we will review during the meeting and I’m sure there’s a reason behind it.”
Currently second place in the WDC standings, Perez was disappointed to miss out on the chance of a podium in Zandvoort:
“It was chaos, just changing a lot and unfortunately a great call in the beginning turned out to be not so great in the end. It’s a shame really that we ended up losing the podium because I feel like we really deserved it today.”
Perez went on to explain that the reason his teammate closed the gap so quickly during his first stint on intermediate tyres was due to being told to save his tyres in case of more rain. At one point, Verstappen lapped four seconds quicker than Perez.
“We were expecting rain, the team was telling me that there was more rain coming. The track was on the dry side, so if I were to push, I would just have destroyed completely the inter tyre.”
He also praised his team and mechanics for being so quick to react for the initial pit stop which allowed him to temporarily take the race lead, saying they were “super quick”. Looking ahead to the next race at Monza, Perez said he expects it to be an “interesting challenge for everyone”.
