Written by Carl Hilliard, Edited by Vyas Ponnuri
Red Bull’s Sergio Perez and Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz collided with each other in the closing stages of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, forcing both cars into immediate retirement as McLaren and Oscar Piastri claim victory.
Going onto lap 50 of 51, the penultimate tour of the race, Perez had made a swooping move down the outside of Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, trying to get into second position and stake his claim higher up the podium. This was undone by a sharp defensive move from Leclerc, which granted Sainz in fourth position, to get past Perez and put himself into P3.
However, as Leclerc managed to get away unscathed off turn two, Perez mounted a challenge back on Sainz, resulting in the two cars coming into contact and colliding into the barriers, ending their race and summoning a safety car, under which the race would eventually finish.
“I was attacking Charles into turn 2 and then I exited turn 2,” Sainz reflected. “Checo [Perez] was on my left. We normally do a slight drift towards the left into the long straight, which I did like every other lap, and suddenly for some reason I don’t understand, Checo and I collided, which is unfortunate and very disappointing.”
“We’ve spoken already, we need to analyse,” Sainz continued. “I’m not someone who wants to put blame on either an excuse or blame another driver. It’s racing, everything happens super fast.”
“My feeling today is honestly I did nothing wrong, I didn’t do any erratic manoeuvre, put him against the wall or anything like that. We were just, like every other lap, drifting a bit, a tiny little bit towards the left because that’s where the racing line is and we just touched. It is what it is,” the Spaniard concluded.
Perez spoke to the media soon after the incident, reflecting on a frustrating end to what was a fantastic drive from start to finish, with the number 11 driver putting Leclerc under immense pressure, in a bid to clinch a second-place finish.
“I felt that exiting turn 2, there was plenty of room between both cars and within a metre or two, we ended up making contact,” Perez admitted. “It’s very unfortunate. It all happened so quickly. I think Carlos was trying to follow the tow from Charles as he went to the inside and that made things really hard.”
“[The pace today is] a massive positive,” Perez continued. “I think we had the pace to fight for the victory today, so we just have to keep it up and hopefully in the coming races, coming weekends, we can be really strong,” the Mexican concluded.
Perez's DNF, coupled with a fifth-place finish from teammate Max Verstappen, means Red Bull have now been surpassed in the 2024 Constructors’ standings by none other than McLaren Racing. McLaren sits at the top with 476 points so far, with RB in second with a tally of 456 points.
Comments