Sergio Perez told his fans not to blame Charles Leclerc for the collision which ended his race after the Ferrari driver was booed during the podium ceremony at the Mexican Grand Prix.
The pair made contact at the first corner moments after the start of yesterday’s race. The collision left Perez’s car with terminal damage, while Leclerc went on to finish the race in third place.After Leclerc was jeered by fans at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, Perez told them on social media not to blame his rival.
“I just want to say thank you to everyone from the bottom of my heart,” said Perez. “You are the best fans in the world. Today, I left everything on the track, saw the space, and took a chance. It wasn’t Charles’ fault; it was just a racing incident.”
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner said he was “absolutely gutted to see Checo go out on the first corner” and also absolved Leclerc of blame.
Horner said Perez “had probably his best start of the season, got the draft and the tow from the three cars ahead and so arrived with massive over-speed. And you can’t blame him at his home race going to try and take the lead in the grand prix.”
“I think you’d have to call it a racing incident because three into one doesn’t go and Charles obviously couldn’t really get out of it, he braked late,” Horner continued. “So, frustrating for Checo and pretty disappointing for his fans to lose him at the first the first corner.”
Although Perez was able to bring his car back to the pits, Red Bull quickly realised they wouldn’t be able to repair it in time for him to return. “The guys did their best to get him back out but there was just too much damage to the floor and underbody of the car.”
Horner was seen commiserating with Perez on the Red Bull pit wall during the race. “It’s a tough moment for him as he is in front of his home crowd, he’s very emotional,” he explained.
“I just said to him: ‘Look, next race next week, you were going for the lead in your home race. You wouldn’t be a racing driver if you weren’t going for it.'”
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
2023 Mexican Grand Prix
- ‘I’m so s*** in qualifying’: Norris berates himself despite pole-winning lap
- Ferrari reaping the benefits of having F1’s most closely-matched team mates
- Norris had “no chance” to beat Verstappen in Mexico even without Q1 exit
- Transcript: How Ricciardo’s race went awry soon after he was told to “bring it home”
- Mercedes see “very encouraging signs” from Austin floor update
Sham (@sham)
30th October 2023, 12:08
Horner’s actual words when the TV showed with his arm on Perez’s shoulder?
Look, don’t worry, we’ll make sure the announcement says the contract was terminated by mutual agreement. Don’t forget to leave your ID at reception.
Coventry Climax
30th October 2023, 12:09
I simply can not understand why Red Bull would want to go another year of utter misery with this guy.
In fact, I still seriously doubt he will be in that second seat next year.
It’s come to a point where it doesn’t really matter what other driver you put in there, as nearly all of them will likely do better than Perez – even if that only means crashing less and costing the team budget that’s better spent elsewhere.
Racing incident? It’s textbook example of not having the wiring correct, up there in the grey matter. And yet another lame excuse for a fault entirely to blame on him and him alone. The guy himself IS a racing incident.
Then both Verstappen and Horner playing it down, putting him in diapers/pampers so to speak and belittling him, while he’s (incomprehensibly) been in F1 for so long already and should have left behind making such beginner’s mistakes long, long ago.
Doggy
30th October 2023, 13:48
In agreement with most of your statement. I wonder if it has to be with financial support and contractual clauses.
But for this: “…It’s come to a point where it doesn’t really matter what other driver you put in there, as nearly all of them will likely do better than Perez …”
I think you meant to say: Sargent, Stroll, Magnusen, etc.
Coventry Climax
30th October 2023, 21:47
I make some rather stupid mistakes alright, from time to time, but no, this time I meant to say what I said. It’s got the word ‘nearly’ in there, which means that some are still excluded.
Doggy
30th October 2023, 23:41
My comment was meant to be a satire to what ‘nearly’ meant. Obviously I failed miserably.
Coventry Climax
31st October 2023, 23:07
Sorry, didn’t catch that. Not native english speaking, so I miss nuances from time to time.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
31st October 2023, 2:37
Definitely agree on sargeant and stroll, they’ve been as bad as perez this season: sargeant being a rookie never showed anything better, stroll had other seasons that could be considered decent, but perez’s highs in other seasons or early 2023 were also higher than stroll’s highs.
Someone like magnussen could do better than perez is atm if he managed to carry his usual haas form to red bull, which is not a given for everyone, see how good albon and gasly are\were in the midfield and how bad they’ve been in red bull, and I doubt he could do as well as perez did early 2023 in any case.
Mooa42
31st October 2023, 0:26
Maybe I am misreading the situation but I feel like these statements from Verstappen and Horner, and similar from Leclerc, are not about appeasing Perez but about their own safety. I think they are trying to appease the local crowd so they have a chance of getting out of Mexico without being attacked or killed.
There is no way RedBull could have replaced Checo before his home grand prix, like they did with deVries, the whole teams lives would have been in danger.
HAL
31st October 2023, 8:43
Bouah, as Raikko would say ! There is also just no reason to beat a dead horse…
Sergio is in Dire Straits, it’s clearly the most difficult part of his carrier, why would you add to it by bashing him publicly.
There is no doubt they are thinking about replacing Perez, but there is also no reason to do it now, a few GP before the end of the season as they have already won everything (2nd place for Perez is merely a very small bonus, they have nothing to gain). DanyRic is just back from injury ; he had a great Mexico WE, but that’s basically the first great performance since Monza so they will want to see what’s coming in the next races before taking any decision.
They will quietly wait for the end of the season, celebrating the new 19 GP win in 1 season with Max. And then, when everything is slowing down for the inter-season, RB will look at the data, and decide.
Cranberry
30th October 2023, 13:39
Two crashes from this weekend were completely mind boggling:
Peres crashing into Leclerc.
Tsunoda crashing into Piastri.
Both these incidents looked as if the driver on the outside (Perez and Tsunoda) was turning into the corner a good 10m too early, as if to try and squeeze the driver on the inside.
Stupid crashes, both drivers should receive serious penalties for their foolishness.
tielemst
30th October 2023, 14:14
Maybe I missed it, but I don’t think Checo got penalty points for causing a collision. Makes the two points Bottas got for his incident with Stroll a bit odd.
MichaelN
30th October 2023, 16:13
There was no investigation into anything ‘Car 11’ did.
All part of the ‘yolo first lap let’s go boys!’ stance the FIA has taken.
HAL
31st October 2023, 9:00
I don’t know if Bottas deserved the 2 penalty points, but the ‘yolo first lap let’s go boys!’ approach make sense, imho (I mean, within limits, but you need to give much greater leniency).
When you have 20 cars grouped together going full beans towards the first corners, full fuel, no-so-hot tires, it is by default quite chaotic. The first breaking points are all a bit of an improvised concept since all the cars are packing up in the breaking and you just can’t see where everybody is…
So either you except the driver to play it slow and safe, which is not what competition is about (and I daresay not what we want to see) or you need to accept that there is no clean war ;-)
Honestly, we have been talking a lot about driver behavior, respect of track limits (or the lack of) etc, but when you watch junior series you see what messy really is… In F1 academy, drivers go all over the place, not respecting track limits at all and there is so much office than FIA is only punishing the big once. Result is a lot of un legit overtaking / defence.
Overall in F1, driver are quite respectful and precise and the driving standards are very high…
tielemst
31st October 2023, 9:34
I’m all for some leniency as you described, but this was not an incident caused by cool tyres, full fuel or a cramped field. This was a driver that chose to forget all drivers on the right of him and coming across to the apex fully expecting two drivers to stamp on their brakes and let him through. I think this deserved a penalty, lap 1 or not.
MichaelN
31st October 2023, 14:54
You’re right, I just don’t think there needs to be any special ‘lap one’ stance since the rules already allow for discretion in issuing penalties, as well as in the severity of them. When the stewards don’t even investigate someone driving into the pole sitter in Turn One, it just feels a bit wrong. Even if they would not issue a penalty it robs people of the opportunity to hear/read their reasoning. And when they then turn around and hand out pretty significant penalties (albeit it meaningless for the mentioned reasons) for smaller incidents later on in the race it only adds to that.
It’s totally fine to be a bit more forgiving in situations that are naturally quite tricky, because we as spectators don’t want to see them all go in single file for fear of getting a penalty – but they’ve been very lenient on this. In general that is, they still like to penalize Ferrari if they get the chance (as in the Australia restart, where out of three start collisions only Sainz got a penalty despite Alonso being able to carry on and the other two being race-ending for both cars involved).
Keith Campbell (@keithedin)
31st October 2023, 13:03
When there is a collision where the culprit comes off badly and the victim doesn’t suffer any significant consequences, then usually no penalty is applied. It goes against the FIA’s assertion that ‘we don’t look at the consequences’, but in reality that is the first thing they look at. If Perez had come through unscathed and Leclerc suffered race ending damage, then you can be sure that a penalty would have been applied (Mexican GP notwithstanding).
Dex
30th October 2023, 20:56
That’s why I don’t like being a fan (except of the sport itself). It clouds one’s judgement, it’s like voluntary brainwashing. Why booing someone only because he existed on track? After all, Leclerc was the victim, not Perez, in this otherwise pure “racing” incident that didn’t show anyone’s bad intentions.
On the other hand, I strongly defend anyone’s right to boo after paying for a ticket. It shows your primitive side, but it’s your right; use it if you must…
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
31st October 2023, 2:34
Yes, but those take it to an extreme level, you can still be verstappen’s fan, like I was some years ago when he was the one occasionally giving trouble to the dominant mercedes, and still be aware when he’s wasting points, just think about early 2018, throwing away the win in china, potentially in monaco, as well as other mistakes, in a moment red bull was the best it had been in a while.