Mismatch In Perez's And Horner's Responses After Sprint Race In Qatar

Sunday, 01 December 2024 at 14:00

Sergio Perez and Christian Horner issued different responses when asked what happened to the 34-year-old F1 driver at the start in pit lane.

Red Bull Racing F1 driver Sergio Perez started the 2024 Qatar Grand Prix from the pit lane as the Austrian team decided to change the setup of his car following the sprint qualifying session, where he was knocked out of Q1 in P16.

Part of the reason for Perez's underwhelming qualifying result was the unfortunate timing of his flying lap, where he and Charles Leclerc both wanted to go at the same time and made each other lose a couple of tenths.

The second part of the reason was that Red Bull didn't nail their setup which was also evident from how Max Verstappen then drove in the sprint race - from P6 to P8.

Red Bull seemingly decided to use the Sprint session as an opportunity to test a different setup on Perez's car, which could be later used not in qualifying and the Grand Prix race not only for Perez but Verstappen as well.

After changing his setup, the 34-year-old Red Bull driver had to start the race from the pit lane. What surprised everyone was that when the light turned green, it took Perez a good couple of seconds before he started moving.

While waiting with the green light on, the Checo was even overtaken by Williams driver Franco Colapinto, who also started from the pit lane.

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Perez.... just sleeping through the start????? Like? The way Colapinto just said bye 😭😭

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When asked after the sprint race about what happened at the start, Sergio Perez surprisingly suggested that he did everything on purpose:

"The main objective of today was to get as much clear air as possible. And we were not in a hurry really to leave, because we wanted to have a lot of clear air as much as possible, to get a read on the car changes."

The 34-year-old was then further asked to clarify whether he really wanted to let Colapinto pass him in the pit lane, and he replied:

"Correct, yes. He was more in a hurry than us, and it was not the priority."

When looking at the onboard footage from Perez's car, it seems like the Mexican first saw the green light and then looked into his mirrors as he very slowly started rolling as if it really was his intention to let the Williams driver pass.

However, when the team principal of Red Bull Racing, Christian Horner, was asked by Sky Sports about what happened to the Mexican F1 driver at the start of the Grand Prix, he didn't know about Checo's plan:

I, yeah, uh? I don't know, to be honest. I'll need to have a chat with him [Perez] about it. It looks like he just misjudged it? But when the light goes out, you're supposed to go."

Notably, Red Bull's choice to go for a "testing session" with Perez seemingly worked as their drivers both made it into Q3 in the Grand Prix Qualifying session that followed.

Max Verstappen even snatched the pole position, although it got taken away from him after the qualifying when he received a one-place grid penalty for an incident with George Russell.