While his Red Bull teammate Max Verstappen secured his fourth consecutive World Drivers’ Championship, Sergio Pérez finished the Las Vegas GP in 10th.
Gaining places
Although the result wasn’t impressive in the Las Vegas GP, Pérez had qualified in P16. He managed to gain six places through several difficult midfield battles.
One move in particular saw the Mexican driver going three cars wide with Kevin Magnussen and Liam Lawson, overtaking both of them at the end of the long straight into turn 14.
“Yeah, I think that was the best part of (my race),” the 34-year-old agreed with a reporter.
Strategy going wrong
Pérez didn’t have many other positives to list in his post-race interview. On top of his poor qualifying, ineffective strategy held the Red Bull down.
Despite everyone around him lining up on medium tyres, Perez had gone for the hards.
High tyre degradation ruined his strategy. He pitted on lap 20 for a set of medium tyres after briefly running as high as P2 when the frontrunners made their stops.
As his tyres wore out, he slipped to seventh and was forced to pit for a set of mediums earlier than planned, leaving him on a two-stop.
This proved costly, as he was on mediums while his rivals opted for the more durable hard tyres, although he did manage to clear some midfield cars in that stint.
“The track was very green in the beginning, and we grained the hard, which meant that we had to do a very long stint on the medium and then going onto the hard, it was just a total disaster, unfortunately.
“We were not expecting this level of degradation, so it didn’t work out, the strategy, for us.”
Moving forward
The Mexican driver admitted that his RB20 felt much better than his result reflected.
“We definitely had a lot better pace than where we finished. I don’t think we maximised our result. But we got the strategy wrong today, unfortunately.”
Moving forward into Qatar, Red Bull has secured their Drivers’ Championship.
Now, they will shift focus to the World Constructors’ Championship, where they currently sit in 3rd. They are 30 points behind Ferrari, who are 24 points behind McLaren. The WCC is not yet mathematically impossible for Red Bull to achieve.
During the last two races of the season, Sergio Perez will certainly be searching for big results. He has scored only 21 points since the summer break. He sits at P8 in the Drivers’ Standings, with his Red Bull seat and career on the line.
