Sergio Pérez finished in fourth position at the 2022 Formula 1 Miami Grand Prix , an event from which he was unhappy with the result after a failure in his Honda power unit prevented him from approaching the Spanish Carlos Sainz to fight for the podium.
Checo Pérez stayed conservative at the start, while teammate Max Verstappen overtook Carlos Sainz . The one from Ferrari stayed in third place ahead of the Mexican from Red Bull.
Pérez tried to get closer to the man from Madrid during the first part of the race, but a loss of power in his engine from lap 20 and that he had to endure for three laps, took him more than seven seconds away.
Checo actually had a curious talk with his engineer, who first considered that the drop in performance of car #11 was due to the fact that he had lost Sainz’s slipstream. When Pérez told him that he felt a loss of power on the straights, he was instructed to change the engine map and return to normal.
However, things did not improve at all. “No, I couldn’t do anything. I had too much deficit in the engine, no matter how hard I tried, I pushed a lot in the corners and I overheated the tires. I couldn’t get to Carlos,” Pérez told FOX Sports México .
Pérez’s opportunities returned when the safety car came out on the track as a result of the accident between Lando Norris and Pierre Gasly, but the failure of the power unit meant that, even with a set of new medium tires against the hard Sainz, he did not have a real chance to go for the last place on the podium.
“I was in the DRS zone, but I didn’t do anything,” said the Mexican.
“I got a little bit of power back, but never quite enough. I lost I think two laps seven seconds, it was a total disaster.”
“I had to push a lot in the corners because I had no power on the straights. I was losing around 10 km/h on the straights, not even with the DRS could I catch up with Carlos,” the Red Bull driver concluded. Finally he did make an attempt to overtake at turn 1, but he went wide and the #55 kept the position.
Pérez remains in third place in the drivers’ championship, with 66 points.
