Sergio Perez said the stewards should investigate a “dangerous” near-miss involving him and other drivers at the chicane at the end of sprint race qualifying.
The Red Bull driver caught several cars at the end of his penultimate timed lap, overtaking Oscar Piastri, Lewis Hamilton, George Russell and Lando Norris at the chicane. Despite the traffic, was still able to set a time which put him provisionally fastest.He told his team on the radio to “have the stewards have a look at that final corner.” No investigation of any incident has been announced.
However Perez believes the situation was unsafe as other drivers were trying to stay close to a narrow dry line on an otherwise damp track. “It was a mess, a super-dangerous situation,” he said.
“I found myself in with one dry line and people just stopped. The difference in speed was huge. Really bad.”
Perez qualified eighth on the grid for today’s sprint race, nine tenths of a second behind his pole-winning team mate Max Verstappen. He said his lap was compromised because he had to run behind Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari.
“I opened my final lap right in tail from Charles, so nothing I could do,” he said. “I was in the dirty air sitting there. It was not good. Unfortunately we didn’t have a good run programme in that session.”
| Perez: | What a fucking joke guys. Fuck! Unbelievable. They all blocked me in the final corner. |
| Bird: | Yeah it was busy out there. |
| Perez: | Yeah I mean I should know than there was so many people there. It was strange run. |
| Horner: | It was a tricky one Checo because unfortunately we wouldn’t have had enough time at the back of the grid there. At least you got the two sustainable but you can race well from there. |
| Perez: | Yeah please have the stewards have a look at that final corner. Everyone was stopped there. |
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11 comments on “Perez wants stewards to investigate “super dangerous” chicane incident”
Comments are closed.
Jere (@jerejj)
29th July 2023, 14:10
I agree with him about stewards taking a look, but hardly super dangerous, so he exaggerated (deliberately or not) that part.
SpaFrancorchamps (@spafrancorchamps)
29th July 2023, 14:21
He is right. One of the longest circuits on the calendar. Absolutely no need to bump all up at the final corner to create space. FIA should had penalised all of them.
Yellow Baron
29th July 2023, 15:17
Does indycar have this problem? They seem to employ common sense on a regular basis. But I wonder if it’s also due to f1’s less than pinnacle tyres
Mark Zastrow (@markzastrow)
29th July 2023, 15:44
Much less frequent in IndyCar, partly because they don’t have tyre warmers so it takes multiple laps at pace to bring them in, but also because they don’t have batteries to recharge so they don’t do slow laps. Will be interesting to see if that change when they introduce their hybrids.
S
29th July 2023, 14:22
Another example of it being only a matter of time until there’s a huge crash at the final corner of just about any track F1 goes to.
It really is truly ridiculous that: A) the teams do this every time, and B) the FIA still doesn’t apply the rule about driving unnecessarily slowly.
The rule exists to prevent cars being in the same place on track with such massive speed differential, after all….
Jim from US (@jimfromus)
29th July 2023, 15:25
Completely agree.
David BR (@david-br)
29th July 2023, 14:28
Given one of the best cars in Formula 1’s history and can do nothing of note with it. Zero. Just moaning every race weekend about someone or other ruining his ‘chances.’
S
29th July 2023, 14:32
Thought you were talking about Hamilton there for a moment.
David BR (@david-br)
29th July 2023, 16:29
Well, I’m sorry to hear that. Must be difficult for you to make sense of Formula 1 in general.
George.be
29th July 2023, 14:35
Drivers on the outlap impeding on a hotlap by sticking to the dry line isn’t dangerous per sé, but worthy of a penalty nonetheless.
How much faster would CHecko have been, had this impeding not happened? Half a second would’ve placed him 5th instead of 8th. Of those that impeded, three are qualified in front of him.
McLaren and Mercedes teams made a big mess, they could’ve warned their drivers, and made sure they were not on that position at that place, at that moment. Lifting in the outlap, anywhere between Stavelot and Blanchimont would’ve fixed that, and improved their own chance on a clean exit out of the Bus stop.
Jim from US (@jimfromus)
29th July 2023, 15:29
As RUS admitted, there was confusion about how much time there was to start their last lap. HOW??? Teams have so much blankety, blank data. How do they not know precisely where they have to be? Red Bull seems to be able to have VER be the final driver in every single Q3 this season, yet Mercedes has no clue where their drivers are. Is the Mercedes super slow pit crew also calculating track position?