The Red Bull driver bagged his third P2 in 2024 on Sunday, securing the position with a strong restart after the first lap red flag and great tyre management.
The Mexican driver was a key part of Red Bull’s dominant display at Honda’s home round was pretty satisfied with his weekend, as he mentioned in the post-race press conference:
“Yeah, it was a good weekend for the team. First of all, I think obviously with the start, doing that restart again is always quite hard to keep the focus for such a long period of time. It worked alright. My second start was a little bit better, but just not enough to get Max.”
The 34-year-old mentioned how he struggled on the mediums, especially when coming through the traffic in the second stint as he had to pass the Mercedes cars, Norris and Leclerc, hurting his tyres.
He also had a moment at Degner 2 in the first stint as Verstappen eased away from him.
“We paid the price a little bit because we were a little bit off balance on that first stint, which meant we couldn’t keep it alive. We had to box and we were undercut by Lando.
“And then I had to push too much on that Medium stint. But then on the Hard stint, I was a lot more comfortable. The pace came back. But I suffered a bit from that first stint, a bit unbalanced.”
The beginning of the season has always brought many joys to the former Racing Point driver, whose last two race wins had come in the first four rounds of the 2023 season. Perez was also pleased to have such a great day at a track where he had struggled massively September of last year.
“I think we are in a good momentum. If you remember here last year, it was probably my worst weekend. So I think if we are strong in places like this with a lot of high-speed content, medium-speed, we can be strong anywhere else. Yeah, it’s been a good weekend.”
The Mexican driver also spoke about his nice moves on the two Mercedes drivers, which both took place at the apex of the fastest corner in Suzuka, the legendary 130R.
“It just turned out to happen both at the same time. Spending time around one of the slowest cars, given the degradation they were having, it was quite penalising. So I was just going for it. And it happened at 130R both times. It’s good fun. It’s good fun to go around there with two cars.”
Many drivers ran off track throughout the 53 laps of the Japanese GP. Luckily for Perez, his slight mishap didn’t end up seriously affecting his race:
“Degner 2 was quite a tricky corner, a lot of people went out there today. I just went in over the kerb and I was just hoping to not pick up damage because it’s so easy with these floors to go off and have damage. As far as I know, we don’t have any.”
“I just understeered wide and went over the kerb. Once you are at the top of the kerb, it’s game over. You just have to let the car roll, go over it, because it’s better to be over than on top of it. But, I obviously picked up a lot of dirt on my tyres, which took a lap or two to really clean up, and I lost a couple of seconds with that,” concluded the 6-time Grand Prix winner, currently second in the Drivers’ Championship after reclaiming it from Charles Leclerc.
