Red Bull driver Sergio Perez has admitted that he must investigate the reasons behind his “backwards” step across Formula 1’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix weekend.
Perez was unable to replicate his win at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit from the previous season, but he still produced another strong drive to complete a Red Bull 1-2.
Despite starting third for the second consecutive weekend, the Mexican capitalised on Red Bull’s dominance in race trim to pass Charles Leclerc on the fourth lap.
Perez would pick up a five-second time penalty for an unsafe release, but the Red Bull driver was 10s clear of the Ferrari on the road to claim a comfortable second.
“We definitely made some good progress,” Perez reflected. “I think it was a shame that we just qualified out of the front row because we had a great start.
“Unfortunately, Charles really kept it together and we couldn’t get through. It was a nice fight then later on.
“And it was quite a compromised race, I’ll say, with the Safety Car there so early. It was a very long stint on the Hard.
“And it was tricky at times, especially in the beginning. We had no warm-up at all. We were sliding a lot. It took us a long time to get through Lewis and Lando.”
Ferrari closed the deficit to Red Bull from Bahrain to Saudi Arabia, but Perez insists that the reigning champions made a “step forward” with its evolved RB20 charger.
“I think overall, it’s a great day for the team,” he added. “Very different track to Bahrain, and we keep being strong. So, yeah, we just have to keep this momentum going.
“I think we’ve taken a step forward from Bahrain. We’ve done good improvements from yesterday, so we still have some bits to tidy up, and our time will come.”
Perez, whose deal expires at the end of the season, is bidding to rebound from a tumultuous campaign last term that saw him trail 290 points behind Verstappen.
Although he’s expressed he is more comfortable with Red Bull’s 2024 challenger, Perez concedes that he was puzzled by his regression from practice to qualifying.
Asked where the car had gotten better compared to Bahrain, Perez replied: “I think things that we are doing with the car. I think last weekend was really a poor race in terms of how we managed it, the amount of degradation we had. But we understood the reasons behind it.
“The race was quite strong today because we were able to make the progress from Friday to the race.
“But I think qualifying, we just went a step backwards. And that’s the main key from our weekend, to understand why we actually went slower than FP2 when you correct for everything.
“So it’s something we’ve got to understand the reasons behind it and make sure that we are able to keep progressing.”
