08/11/2021
NEWS STORY
While he didn't face the anguish of being ordered to yield to his teammate, Sergio Perez admits that he wanted more from home Grand Prix.
For much of the weekend, the big topic was whether Red Bull, in the event of Sergio Perez leading Sunday's Grand Prix, would order the Mexican to give way to his teammate. Which in turn begged the question of how Christian Horner and his men expected to leave the country.
Following Saturday's shock qualifying result Red Bull had the difficult task effectively taken away from it, as Max Verstappen and Perez started from the second row.
While Valtteri Bottas "parted the sea" for Verstappen, leaving Toto Wolff seeing red, Perez spent much of the afternoon looking at the back of the other Mercedes.
Pitting 11 laps after the world champion, the Mexican hoped to mount a late attack and thereby claim a 1-2, but it was not to be.
And while, Perez was delighted to be on his home podium, he admitted to wanting more from the race.
"Being on the podium at your home Grand Prix is something very special," he said. "But obviously I wanted more, I wanted to win the race and obviously to finish one-two for the team would have been amazing.
"At the end of the day, we are such competitive persons that if we finish third, we really, really don't enjoy it," he admitted. "But today is one of those days that I must enjoy, because the crowd and seeing so many people so happy, and especially on the podium, like very much everyone who has been with me since day one was on the podium, so that was extremely special for me."
Speaking at race end, Hamilton had admitted that had the race been just one lap more he would probably have been unable to fend off Perez.
"It was really close," agrees Perez, "as Lewis said, there was a lap where it was so critical to do the undercut. Obviously, they pitted that lap, so we did the opposite and we went long.
"It was a bit tricky with the lapped cars," he said, "I think we all lost some time there.
"It was really close. I didn't have a chance, overtaking here is really difficult given their straight line speed that they were really strong on that. It was just that I had the chance.
"It's a bit of as shame, because I think we had the pace to finish one-two today."
Check out our Sunday gallery from Mexico City, here.