Sergio Perez has explained how a "miscommunication" played a role in the difficulties he faced during the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. The Mexican led in the initial stages of the race after overtaking Charles Leclerc at the start, but his speed seemed to slip away, leading to teammate Max Verstappen getting ahead of him for P1 on Lap 15. From there, Perez was unable to match the pace of his fellow Red Bull driver, though still came home in second to complete a 1-2 result for the Milton Keynes-based squad. When asked what had happened, given that he had previously looked quick on Friday and Saturday, Perez told Sky Sports F1 after the race: "Unfortunately, we missed a Virtual Safety Car stop. "There was some miscommunication, and once we went it was a bit too late. We were a bit unlucky there."
Perez keen to understand what happened
Perez is hoping to understand why he appeared to be struggling with tyre degradation more than Verstappen during the race. "At the restart [after the VSC] I just had too much deg[radation] on the Medium tyre," he explained. "That was extremely high for me, and it's something that we have to understand what happened there, because certainly Max was a lot stronger today on that Medium stint. "[There are] a lot of things that we have to review from today, but it's a very good team result." When Verstappen overtook Perez for the lead, the driver from Mexico was told "no fighting". When quizzed about this afterwards, Perez said that he could understand the call. "I think it was the right call made by the team because, at that time, Max was further ahead," Perez added. "It was just a good team result. In this place, anything can happen, so at the end of the day, we managed to do a 1-2 so that's a great team result."
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