Perez describes 'disaster of a race' in Austria

"There was a lot of damage on the side, but I think I touched a bit with Piastri in turn 4," Perez said about his afternoon at the Red Bull Ring. "I don't know if it came from there. It was unfortunate because we had a good start, but from then on, the car was nowhere, it was on the knife edge. Nothing I could do, I was just off balance."

The Mexican didn't make things easier for himself either by speeding in the pit lane at a pit stop. It landed him a five-second time penalty, making his pit stop a total of just under 10 seconds. It threw him back even further. "It was just a disaster of the race that started really well, but I think with just lacking so much pace out there and sliding around, there was no chance of fighting people ahead."

Perez fought a tight duel with Hulkenberg for P6 on the last lap. For a while, the 34-year-old driver was in front of the man from Germany. "I tried. He had a mistake into the final corner, I could fight for it, but I couldn't get any traction then out of the entry."

Perez seeks explanation

For the umpteenth week in a row, Max Verstappen's teammate made little to no impression. What was lacking in Spielberg? "I think there are a few things that we got to look back and carefully look at everything because in qualifying, the main thing was that it took me too long dialling into the balance early on and we just went through the rubber too quickly, but then I think we had the better pace that we showed, but the race pace was a question mark because I felt like we did some really good improvements there," he concluded.