Sergio Perez offered no excuses for crashing on his second lap of practice at the Hungaroring.
The Red Bull driver lost control of his car as he turned into turn five. Perez ran onto the grass approaching the right-hander and his car snapped out of control. He struck the barrier with the front-left corner of his car, causing significant damage to it.“It was just a mistake from my side,” Perez told the official F1 website. “But the guys have done a tremendous job to get the car together and get some running in FP2, and at least we have got some data to look through.”
The crash damaged some of the new parts Red Bull have introduced to the RB19 this weekend. Perez’s running was also limited as drivers have fewer sets of tyres available to use under the new Alternative Tyre Allocation rules which are in place this weekend.
Although Perez’s car was repaired in time for him to take part in second practice, he said it was too early to judge what difference they’ve made. “I think it’s very early in that regard given the little running that we ended up doing with the tyre format that we have,” he explained. “I think we will have a better idea tomorrow. Certainly the grid is really, really tight.”
While his team mate Max Verstappen only used a single set of soft tyres in second practice, Perez used a set of the medium tyres as well. Drivers will be required to use a different tyre compound in each stage of qualifying tomorrow.
“Obviously with this weekend format in terms of tyre usage it will be very important to be able to get a good balance basically through all compounds because we see that in qualifying we’re going to be going through them all,” Perez continued. “I think we got good information, we managed to run the medium tyre as well, so some good news for there.”
Despite his limited running, Perez believes they’ve “got everything in place to go and try and have a solid weekend.”
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2023 Hungarian Grand Prix
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Euro Brun (@eurobrun)
21st July 2023, 18:14
Was he really hindered by the tyre rules? He literally only used 1 set of tyres in P1 thanks to binning it, then 2 sets in P2, so 3 for the whole day.
How many drivers used less than 3?
hunocsi (@hunocsi)
21st July 2023, 18:36
It’s weird of Perez to admit that the crash was the mistake of the author, but I guess he’s allowed to have his opinion.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
21st July 2023, 20:16
Probably because there’s some theories about red bull purposely sabotaging him (you can find them even in this site, some of my classmates from higher school, whom I meet every few months watch some races too and also hinted at red bull making sure he crashes out etc.), so he said, it was my mistake, they didn’t put oil on wheels or anything to that effect.
Sonny Crockett (@sonnycrockett)
21st July 2023, 18:44
Dead man walking.
SteveP
21st July 2023, 19:03
Nice of him to not put the blame on the other guy in the car…
Oh, there was only him in there, yeah, definitely his fault.
Velocityboy (@velocityboy)
21st July 2023, 19:10
I think Sergio has a case of the yips.
tielemst
21st July 2023, 19:44
Is Checo secretly a part of the pinishment for breking the Costa cap rules?
Jere (@jerejj)
21st July 2023, 19:48
Of course, & a rookie error.
Mr Squiggle
21st July 2023, 22:39
This was one of those moments in sport. If you saw it in a film, you’d say, ‘that’s nonsense, there’s no way a topline driver would do that just after de vries was sacked’.
he wasn’t just a little bit on the grass either, it was almost a full tyre width.
I’m just stunned
Alan S Thomson
22nd July 2023, 3:11
He’s finished. He has mentally checked out.
Glenn
22nd July 2023, 7:46
Let’s face it RB just want a solid 2nd driver to support VER, best PER forgets about winning and backs off a bit. Trying to compete with with VER has put him over the limit. And if RIC thinks it will be different if he makes it back there he is wrong.