Sergio Pérez suffered problems in his car during the demanding race this Sunday at the Miami International Autodrome, after a sudden failure in the power unit surprised him on lap 20 of the 57 scheduled.
At the time the Mexican was trying to catch Carlos Sainz in the fight for third position, chasing the Spaniard a second behind, but in no time he lost seven seconds to the Ferrari driver.
With the help of Red Bull from the pit wall, Pérez made a set-up change that allowed him to regain a logical race pace, but performance was never quite the same for the driver from Guadalajara.
That meant that it was of little use to him to have entered the pits during the neutralization of the race due to the appearance of the safety car in the final part of the race to mount new medium tires, since despite having an advantage over Sainz in that aspect, the deficit on the straight made it impossible to attack him properly, even with the DRS in his favour.
Once the Miami Grand Prix was over, Horner explained to the microphones of Sky Sports F1 Great Britain what happened to Pérez and how much it affected him.
“We had a problem with a sensor on ‘Checo”s engine. The guys managed to fix it but he lost like 30 horsepower because of it. He was losing half a second a lap,” said the Red Bull principal.
If he had not suffered this inconvenience, Horner thinks that Pérez’s pitstop during the safety car would have allowed him to overtake both Sainz and Leclerc and thus get a new one-two for Red Bull.
“I think without that he could have finished second with the tire advantage he had over the two Ferraris after I had called him into the pits,” he said.
“Obviously it’s frustrating to have this problem with ‘Checo’. It’s something we need to work on with the guys at HRC (Honda Racing Corporation) to understand and fix.”
The problem that affected Checo Pérez comes in a season in which Red Bull has already suffered a double retirement in Bahrain and the withdrawal of Max Verstappen in Australia, while the Dutchman also had problems on Friday during the second free practice session in Miami.
