Ferrari suffered a shock double retirement in Baku at the weekend, but miscommunication down at Red Bull could have cost Sergio Perez even more valuable championship points!
After Carlos Sainz’s retirement brought out the Virtual Safety Car, Ferrari decided to pit Leclerc for a set of hard tyres. Perez was supposed to follow suit but instead stayed out due to a “miscommunication” with the team.
Speaking to F1 after the race, he said, “unfortunately, we missed the Virtual Safety Car stop. There was a miscommunication and what we wanted was too late. We were a bit unlucky there because I would have invented my race when we were leading.”
“On the restart, I had too much drag,” he added. “The degradation was much higher for me, so I need to understand what happened there because certainly, Max was much stronger in that mid stint. So a lot of things we have to review, but it’s still a good result.”
Verstappen wins the #AzerbaijanGP from Perez. A Red Bull 1-2 🏆 pic.twitter.com/H8XKdJNPet
— WTF1 (@wtf1official) June 12, 2022
He got a great start at the beginning of the race but was overtaken by his teammate, Max Verstappen, later on. Verstappen went on to win the race by over 16 seconds, with Perez finishing second, securing Red Bull’s third 1-2 finish of the season.
However, thankfully for Red Bull, all their errors were made redundant by Leclerc’s engine yeeting itself from yet another Grand Prix.
Were you surprised to see Red Bull not pit during the VSC? Let us know in the comments.
