In the final stages of Sunday’s race at Paul Ricard, Checo Pérez was involved in a brutal battle with Mercedes’ George Russell for the last position on the podium.
Following a breakdown in Guanyu Zhou’s Alfa Romeo at turn 6 of the French track with four laps to go before the checkered flag, Race Direction deployed a Virtual Safety Car that changed the race for the Mexican driver.
On lap 51 of 53 the VSC finished, but Sergio Pérez was confused by a message from Race Direction that the session would resume later than it actually did, allowing Russell to steal the final podium spot from him. to the Red Bull driver.
According to the virtual safety car regulations, the green flag that restarts the action must be shown between 10 and 15 seconds after the message has been issued notifying the teams and drivers that the VSC ends, but in this case, it took about a minute.
“It was very bad luck what happened to me with the virtual safety car,” Pérez said as soon as he finished the race in fourth place.
“I got a message that I was going to finish at Turn 9 so I was prepared for it, but it didn’t end there. Then I got another message that I was going to finish at Turn 12 and we were too close to each other.
“It seems that George had different information and was able to better prepare for the restart.”
“It’s a shame that the virtual safety car interfered with the outcome of the race, to be honest. It should never be like that, but today it was.”
“The message that he was going to finish VSC was completely wrong, because he said he was going to finish at Turn 9 and in the end he didn’t finish until Turn 12.
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner believes Perez had enough pace to fend off Russell in the final three laps were it not for the VSC issue, and said he wanted to speak to the FIA to understand what happened.
“Checo had more problems this weekend with [tyre] degradation than we’ve seen so far,” said Horner .
“And the most frustrating thing for him is that there was a Race Direction error with the safety car, the VSC, because they couldn’t finish it when they said and did a weird restart.
“Speaking to him, he told me that he didn’t have the delta time he had to meet in his car, so he had to brake more than normal to not exceed that delta.
“George did know he was inside the delta, or maybe the information they had was different.”
“We have to go ask about this. Because yes, it has been frustrating, I think I would have had the pace to hold the double podium.”
“However, they are still important points that we have added today in both championships,” Horner concluded.
Additional information from Luke Smith
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