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Perez had a plan! He deliberately waited at the pit lane start
- Ludo van Denderen
Sergio Perez once again surprised everyone when he did not go as soon as the light turned green. Instead, he kept waiting for quite some time before hitting the gas. This move shocked everyone, even Red Bull Racing team principal Christian Horner, who later said, "When the lights go out, you are supposed to go." But told GPblog and others that it was his intention to wait longer.
After the sprint race, Horner argued that there was no reason why Perez should have waited at the green light. Horner also hinted that Perez might have misjudged the situation. Perez, however, said he did no such thing.
"We wanted to have a big gap. One of the reasons we started from the pit lane was not to recover all the positions and get into the points. We knew that we were quite out, and we wanted a big gap to the people ahead to have as much clear traffic as possible." Perez told GPblog among others.
Bad luck for Colapinto
Franco Colapinto also started from the pit lane and got stuck behind an idling Perez. An unfortunate moment for the Williams Argentinian. "Luckily, he managed to get through. For us it was important, we tried a lot of things, but we wanted to have that gap to be in clean air for most of the race," said Max Verstappen's teammate.
This article was translated by Savannah Lenz.