Perez made “very good progress” in Austin but admits more was possible

Sergio Perez was encouraged by the progress he made at the Circuit of the Americas following a string of poor results.

Both Red Bull drivers made up five places from their starting positions in the United States Grand Prix. Max Verstappen won, while Perez gained his final position when Lewis Hamilton’s disqualification moved him up to fourth. This was his best result in a grand prix since Monza.

Perez was generally happy with his performance in the race. “I think we’ve shown at times really good pace. Just my pace on the hard tyre was not good enough to make more progress, so something that we got to look at,” Perez said.

“We know we compromised quite a bit our balance for the weekend given that it was only one practice and this is what happens on the sprint event, you either go wrong direction or right direction but I do expect to be a lot better.”

He started the race ninth, three places behind Verstappen. Perez qualified less than a tenth of a second off his team mate, whose quickest lap time in Q3 was deleted for a track limits infringement.

During the race Perez made three on-track passes during the race but only one was truly for position. The first was on Esteban Ocon, who was heading for retirement in his damaged Alpine, the second was on Daniel Ricciardo after Perez’s first pit stop dropped him behind the AlphaTauri, and the third pass was on the one-stopping and pain-riddled Charles Leclerc for fifth place with four laps to go.

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Verstappen meanwhile charged to victory, passing Russell and Ferrari drivers Carlos Sainz Jnr and Leclerc on track by lap 11, taking the lead from Lando Norris during the second stint then passing Leclerc again after his second pit stop to return to the lead. He finished 18.46 seconds ahead of Perez, the closest the pair have finished a grand prix since Monza.

Although Perez’s fastest lap was 0.282s slower than Verstappen’s, his potential fastest lap based on the combination of his best sector times during the race was actually 0.116s quicker than his team mate’s. He acknowledged he hadn’t consistently extracted the pace from his car over a whole lap, but said that gave him encouragement for the next races.

“I think we’ve made some very good progress, especially considering how much we compromised the car. We believe that we left a lot of [untapped] performance in it. So hopefully we are able to prove that come Mexico next weekend,” he added.

Perez said the reduced practice time available on the sprint race weekend was part of the reason why he hadn’t managed to get as much out of his car as Verstappen.

“We were so lost. I think we were having some difficulties with our preparation on the simulator to what we were experiencing on track, and just on track taking the wrong directions and then end up compromising massively our weekend. So I think we needed to step back a bit and start all over again,” he said.

“I think we didn’t get to show our full pace this weekend, so I really believe that we should be a lot stronger [in Mexico] than what we were today.”

But after a run of races where his deficit to Verstappen has put scrutiny on his level of performance, Perez said “it’s good just to do a full race distance and understand that there is quite a lot more potential coming up”.

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