Sergio Perez believes any opportunity of a strong finish in the Bahrain Grand Prix was lost after his first lap clash with the Toro Rosso of Brendon Hartley.
During the opening lap Perez had tried to go around the outside of Hartley into Turn 4, only for the Toro Rosso driver to lock up and and tag the Force India, pitching the car around leaving him facing the wrong direction.
During the formation lap, the pair had already made mistakes after the Mexican driver overtook the Kiwi and failed to give the place back on their way to the grid, this led to both drivers receiving time penalties after the race had ended.
"It feels like an opportunity lost because my race was effectively over on lap one," said Perez. "We knew how important it was to stay out of trouble, but there was nothing I could do to avoid what happened. I made a pretty good start, but Brendon [Hartley] lost control of his car and spun me around. I had a lot of damage to the floor and that cost me performance for the rest of the race.
"Despite that, I nearly made it back into the points, but in the end, there was no chance to do it. We can look at some positives: it was a fun race, with lots of battles and we are making progress with the car. I hope we can continue the good work and be quicker in China, where we will hopefully get more performance from our package."
Force India's chief operating officer Otmar Szafnauer, believes Perez was an innocent victim in his clash with Hartley and commended Perez on his 12th place finish on the track before the time penalty was applied, despite driving what he described as a significantly damaged car.
"Sergio’s race was compromised heavily by the contact with Hartley on the opening lap where we were simply the innocent victim. There was big contact, which damaged the floor quite significantly and impacted performance. The spin dropped him to the back of the field and a slow puncture forced him to pit early and adopt a two-stop strategy. To recover to P12 was a tremendous effort in the circumstances."
