Sergio Perez continues to be at odds with Lando Norris after the Abu Dhabi F1 GP and believes it will take two days for a clash to occur.
It wasn’t the ending Red Bull’s Perez had hoped for at the Abu Dhabi F1 GP. The penalty sparked complaints on the radio and resulted in a warning from the stewards after the FIA apologized for comments that were taken as a personal insult.
Apart from his violent rant on the radio, Perez was still not coming to terms with the penalty he had received for colliding with McLaren’s Norris at Turn 6. The moment was certainly awkward, as the Brit declared that given the difference in speed, he would actually give in to him.
But Perez still approached and touched each other. The Englishman took evasive action and rushed into the final to maintain his position until the Mexican returned and overtook him again. Red Bull assumed that the score was 50:50 for him and that the McLaren driver still held the position at that point.
“Honestly, I think we ended up reaching out. It was unfortunate, but it takes both parts to reach out. And Rand has a certain responsibility as well. Because he became me as if there was no one else.’ There,’ Perez told the media. “There was some tire-to-tire contact in the end, but that was because I was completely on his side.
“He cut the corner, bought time, and still got a penalty. To be honest, I don’t agree with the decision, but there’s nothing you can do about it.” He lost nothing. Not yet. Whatever he won, but like I said, when you make contact with each other, both cars need to do it to make that kind of contact. In my opinion, it was 50/50.
“To be honest, it’s hard to understand why I was punished.” “I’m happy with the performance we showed,” concluded Perez, who finished second away. However, despite finishing ahead of Norris, he fell back to fourth place.
The Briton said he simply lacked the speed, especially after being overtaken by rivals such as Ferrari and Mercedes. If Norris had been in front of them he would have managed to maintain his position as the pace was similar everywhere but not so much that they were overtaking each other.
“He was ahead of the curve,” Norris told the media. “I’m trying to let him pass. I’m on the right side and I’m trying to pass him and somehow he crashes into me even though I was four cars away from the apex. Very Impressive. I don’t know. I literally tried to pass him and somehow he hit me and got a ticket.
“Overall it was tough. It’s not like Ferrari and Mercedes separated. If I had been in front of Mercedes at the pit stop, I would have stayed in front of Mercedes because of the dirty air. Maybe? As for the fight with George, even if he caught the car, it was always only to his advantage.
“Sometimes I would catch them at the end of the straight and then I would have to spend the whole lap behind them. So sometimes you get a little bit unlucky. But George did a good job. We did a good job and Mercedes also did a good job so I’m not going to take anything away from them.We didn’t have the pace that we wanted so I tried too hard to match their pace. We had to push, we had to relax like on both sets of hard tires, like mediums, so that was probably the pace we missed the most.”< /p>
The details of the case are as follows: https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/video.2023-abu-dhabi-grand-prix-perez-picks-up-penalty-for-contact- with-norris. 1783638695201343621.html
Here is the strategy for the battle between Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc
Here’s warning to Sergio Perez from FIA
Here’s how F1 Abu Dhabi GP panned out
Here is a link to the F1 Discord channel. Sign in to interact
