Perez brands Albon contact a ‘racing incident’ despite penalty

Sergio Perez has labelled his contact with Alexander Albon a “racing incident” despite being issued a penalty by the stewards.

In the latter stages of the race, Perez attempted to overtake Albon into Turn 13, but made contact with the Williams driver.

The contact sent Albon out of the points, while Perez went on to cross the line in eighth place.

Perez was issued a five-second time penalty and one penalty point as a result, but had enough of a gap over the competition to keep hold of his place.

"With the Alex incident, there was nothing there,” Perez explained. It was hust a racing incident.”

Perez and Albon were also reviewed for a potential Safety Car infringement, but Perez explained that there was not enough data available to make a judgement.

"Also with the Safety Car, I was ahead of him and Alex overtook me under the Safety Car, but the system is not good enough so they couldn’t tell at the time that I was ahead.

"It’s how things are but let’s look forward to Japan.”

Red Bull endured its first defeat of the year in Singapore, with Carlos Sainz securing the victory for Ferrari.

The Milton Keynes-based squad has been struggling for form all weekend - but Perez is confident that it will be back up to speed at Suzuka.

"It was quite difficult, quite tricky. Not a nice day for us," he said.

"I think this is circuit dependant and we should be a lot stronger when we are in Japan hopefully."