Sergio Perez admits that he thought Red Bull had “screwed up” at the Monaco Grand Prix after he pitted for Intermediate tyres.
At the start of the delayed race, all drivers took on the Extreme Wet compound following a heavy downpour.
As conditions cleared, most of the field pitted for Intermediate tyres before switching to slicks a handful of laps later.
However, some drivers, including Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz, made the switch straight from the Wet compound to the dry weather compound in order to avoid time lost in the pit lane.
Perez was one of the first of the frontrunners to move to Intermediates, and went on to take the race win ahead of Sainz.
“When I was on the inters I was like ‘I think we screwed up’,” Perez said.
“The track was pretty dry and it felt like it was just a matter of laps before we needed to go onto the slicks.
“At that time, it was just the crossover between the inters that was a bit quicker but because of the warm-up of the slick tyres, it’s where we could make the difference to Carlos.
“When he boxed for that tyre, we were able to have a very quick in-lap, we pushed really hard. The tyre was there and the track was dry for the slicks tyres.”
Despite taking victory at the race, Perez says Red Bull “can’t be happy” due to a number of close calls during the grand prix.
“It was quite difficult the first laps because, especially on the Hard [tyre], the warm-up felt a bit tricky,” he said.
“You don’t put in a lot of energy in Monaco. It’s a day just to bring it home.
“We cannot be happy because we could have done a mistake. I was chatting earlier to Max, the amount of times that even Carlos, he was so close into 15, to touch the barrier.
“I was so close, Max, so we all had big moments today when the race could have been over.”
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