Was Perez podium finish in danger for a while? 'I had it under control'
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General
Sergio Perez takes home 15 points from the Hungarian Grand Prix. The Red Bull Racing driver crossed the line in third place after 70 laps on the Hungaroring and he is satisfied with that.
Perez finishes on podium
"It was good, but very tough especially starting on the on the hard compound," Perez summed up his Sunday in Budapest. "It felt very low grip initially. But just to follow around and to overtake, you know, there were times where basically we just had one line because off-line was a lot of rubber and we were damaging a lot the tires. So it was not easy to to overtake out there today. As usual, you know, it's it's a track that is very very difficult to overtake, but I think we might we managed to execute a a good strategy."
Nevertheless, the Mexican climbed from P9 to P3. He is therefore satisfied with the strategy chosen with Red Bull. Perez started on hard tyres, drove for a long time and then changed to mediums twice. For a while, even second place to Lando Norris seemed to be a possibility, but in the final laps he just suddenly had to defend against Lewis Hamilton, who was still hoping for a podium finish from fourth place.
"It was quite difficult because we were going through the black markers Lando myself, I was chasing Lando. But yeah going off-line, I had like two very bad laps just cleaning up my tyres and it was when Lewis was coming up," he said. "But luckily they cleaned up and I think towards the end. I had him under control. And we were doing sort of similar a few tenths off but not enough to to be overtaken, so yes, it was good. Unfortunately at the end, we beat it on the same lap as Piastri. But I think I had to use my tires a lot harder than I wanted to."
Major updates for Red Bull
The updates to the RB19 seem to be having an effect, as teammate Max Verstappen was 33 seconds faster than runner-up Lando Norris. How Checo felt about it. "I think we saw yesterday that the gap over one lap is very small, it was like five tenths between the the top 10. So it was super small, but hopefully we are able to see the the real pace of the car in in Belgium, which should suit the the car a bit better. So we'll see there," Perez concluded not straightforwardly.