It was a fairly eventful day on track for the Red Bull of Sergio Perez in Austria.
As the team celebrates Max’s win, they can also be pretty chuffed with the 8 points Perez landed with his P6 finish – all things considered.
The Mexican driver had a run-in with Lando Norris on Lap 4 which saw him exit the track briefly heading for the gravel. Thankfully the minor blip did little damage to the RB16B, but Perez’s race was “pretty much ended” in his opinion.
As the race went on, there were two incidents involving the Red Bull driver and the Ferrari of Charles Leclerc that saw the Monegasque driver head for the gravel on both occasions.
Following an investigation by the stewards, Perez was handed down two 5-second penalties after each clash.
Since then, Sergio has come out to apologise publicly to Charles, explaining what happened during today’s race from his point of view.
“I’m obviously not very happy with my race today”, Perez said.
“On the fourth lap I had the position and I out-braked Lando but he pushed me off the track which pretty much ended my race.
“As for the other incidents with Charles, I still have to review the situations and look at the incidents because I thought that I was ahead in both of them, especially the second one but it’s hard to say right now.
“I braked as late as possible, we were in dirty air and we had very old tyres so I lost the rear on the second one into Turn 6. I’m very sorry for Charles and how I affected his race because that’s not the way I like to race.
“I don’t feel happy with myself for compromising the race for another driver.”
The Red Bull driver then congratulated his team mate Max Verstappen who fairly well sailed to his victory today.
“I am very happy for Max and the rest of the Team, it was great that we could get more points today at our home race at the Red Bull Ring. We move on and I’m looking forward to the next race at Silverstone.”
