Photo Credit: Red Bull Content Pool
Even though Segio Perez admitted at the beginning of the race that he was hoping to do better than finishing in P5 in the sprint, his expectations for the race fell off due to his tyre life. As a result, Segio Perez didn’t expect to make it to the podium in the sprint race, where he started in seventh place. Despite this, the Mexican was successful in accruing valuable points towards P2 in the World Championship.
He believes the first few laps spent behind Oscar Piastri didn’t help his cause in regards to the degradation he suffered from.
“It looked like that (better progress) in the beginning, but i think always starting from what I have started, I’d probably damage or use the tyre a little bit too much.”
“The degradation was a little bit higher than I really wanted, unfortunately. That’s something we need to think of and make sure that we can sort that for tomorrow because that would be very important,” explained the Mexican.
The 33-year-old driver will have an even greater challenge on Sunday as a result of his starting position on the grid, which is P9. However, he believes that he still has a chance to finish on the podium provided that they carry out their strategies properly at the Circuit of The Americas.
“I think there is some good learnings to take on to tomorrow and conditions are gonna be similar tomorrow, so hopefully we are able to learn on that.”
“If we are able to make good progress early on, things should be looking good,” he added.
Perez does not really understand what could have caused the tyre degradation to be significantly worse than estimated. Yet, he is hopeful that Red Bull can still put up their best effort to figure things out before the race at the United States Grand Prix on Sunday afternoon.
“I think we got plenty of information to analyse because definitely there are things that we are doing that are probably hurting us,” he concluded.
