28/06/2021
NEWS STORY
Red Bull boss, Christian Horner is full of praise for Sergio Perez after botched pit stop cost the Mexican a podium finish.
Out-qualified by Lando Norris on Saturday, Sergio Perez looked set to make up for his disappointment when he eventually passed the Briton on the tenth lap of Sunday's Grand Prix.
With Valtteri Bottas in hot pursuit, the Mexican's race was thrown into turmoil by a lengthy pit stop, due to a sticking left-rear, on lap 26 which saw him emerge behind the Finn when the Mercedes driver overcut him a lap later.
Subsequently switching to a two-stop strategy, following his second stop on lap 54, Perez emerged 21s down on the Finn. On fresh mediums the Red Bull driver began to reel in his prey, who was encountering issues with backmarkers.
However, at the line Perez remained fourth, albeit just 0.527 down on the Mercedes.
Asked at race end how much longer he would have needed the race to be in order to snare his quarry, Perez replied: "Half a lap really...
"It's how it is sometimes," he continued. "The soft was worse than expected, and then we had a poor stop which meant that we gave the position to Valtteri.
"But then the team tried to recover with the strategy and unfortunately there at the end it wasn't enough, but we just tried our very best."
"The whole team's working tremendously well at the moment," said Christian Horner, "the only hiccup we had in that race was the pit stop for Checo but other than that it was an immaculate performance.
"Checo drove the wheels off the car today," he added. "It was a shame the pit stop didn't go better for him because he would have maintained the track position pretty easily.
"But his fightback was impressive and I think that it was just a second or two on that left-rear that cost him."
Check out our Sunday gallery from Spielberg, here.