Perez thought his race was ruined: 'It was just a matter of time'

Not a mistake by Red Bull after all

Starting from third place, Perez needed a miracle to win in Monaco, but that miracle came through a strategic masterstroke from Red Bull Racing and especially the blunder at the pit wall of Ferrari. Perez himself thought for a moment during the race that things would go wrong, but can now only thank his team.

''When I was on the inters I was like… I think we screwed up because the track was pretty dry and it felt like it was just a matter of laps before we needed to go onto the slicks. Yeah, at that time, still like, it was just the crossover between the inters that were a bit quicker but because of the warm-up of the slick tyres and it’s where we could make the difference to Carlos when he boxed for that tyre, we were able to have a very quick in-lap, we pushed really hard and yeah, the tyre was there and the track was dry for the slicks tyres,'' says the Mexican.

Tough conditions in Monaco

GPblog's analysis earlier revealed that Perez gained time on Sainz in that extra lap on the intermediates, coming back on track just ahead of the Spaniard. Still, after that it was not a foregone conclusion that Perez would win easily, because on the slicks it was not easy in the damp conditions.

''Saying that, it was quite difficult the first laps because, especially on the hard, the warm-up felt a bit tricky. You don’t put in a lot of energy in Monaco so… It’s a day just to bring it home. We cannot be happy because we could have done a mistake. I was chatting earlier to Max, the amount of times that even Carlos, he was so close into 15, to touch the barrier. I was so close, Max, so we all had big moments today when the race could have been over,'' concludes the Red Bull driver.