'Red Bull ruined Sergio Perez's race by strategy in Belgium'
- Sandy van Wijngaarden
The Belgian Grand Prix was an important race for Sergio Perez. A strong qualifying allowed him to start from second place. In the end, the race went a lot less well and he finished in eighth place. After George Russell' s disqualification, this became seventh place. According to F1 analyst Peter Windsor, this was due to Red Bull Racing's strategy.
Sergio Perez's Red Bull Racing contract appears to be hanging by a thread. The Austrian team made no secret of the fact that the races before the summer break were very important for the Mexican. After that, talks about his future were in fact imminent.
Red Bull Racing chose the wrong strategy
On his own YouTube channel, Peter Windsor analysed Perez's race. ''One thought he was going to have quite a good race,'' the Brit said. ''He was there on the front row of the grid. He got passed by Lewis early on. And then he kind of fell back after that. I think he gave up once he got passed by Max and cruised around''
Falling back from second place to eighth is mainly due to the team's strategy, according to Windsor. ''complaining at the end of the race of poor balance and not a lot of things were right. Although, in fairness to him, Red Bull did run him on two sets of mediums and then a hard just to do something different. And in a way, it was the wrong thing to do."
''They should have taken the gamble of start on the mediums and then run one stop on hards. I wonder if anybody else is going to try that? Oh, yeah, George Russell. Guess what? He won the race. So, it would have been worth doing that with Sergio, but they didn’t do that. '' Windsor said.
This article was written in collaboration with Sophia Crothall.