The British Grand Prix, the tenth round of Formula 1 2022, allowed Checo Pérez to maintain second place in the drivers’ championship and close the gap against his Red Bull teammate, Max Verstappen, after being second and the Dutchman seventh .
Checo Pérez started fourth, but soon dropped to last after colliding with Charles Leclerc at the second race restart after Guanyu Zhou’s brutal crash. From there he worked his way into the top six when the race reached its halfway point.
Pérez was fourth just before the safety car came out due to the abandonment of Esteban Ocon’s Alpine. Red Bull decided to call him in for a quick pit stop, where they put him on the soft tyre, a strategy also followed by subsequent race winner Carlos Sainz and Lewis Hamilton.
“After the restart, Perez realized he could still win and he showed incredible fighting spirit. He was the fastest,” Red Bull adviser Helmut Marko told Red Bull-owned Austrian network Servus .
When the race resumed, Pérez overtook Hamilton for third place before engaging in a duel with the Mercedes driver and Charles Leclerc, who had lost the lead to Sainz on older, harder tyres.
It was a vibrant three-way battle where the Mexican came out the winner despite the fact that for moments his battery did not allow him the same performance of the hybrid system as Hamilton’s. That performance earned him the recognition of best driver of the day and a Marko who spoke like this: “It was definitely the best race in terms of the final part”.
Asked by those present about whether there is a number 1 or 2 driver in Red Bull, Helmut Marko insisted that for now there is no decision, but made it clear that if Checo wants to be champion, he must first defeat Verstappen.
“We don’t have any condition of number one or number two driver. But it’s something simple, if you want to be world champion you have to beat Max and that’s the issue. For us there is no obstacle. We don’t have anything decided”.
After ten races, Verstappen leads the drivers’ championship by 34 points ahead of Checo and nine more than Leclerc.
