Perez claims Red Bull caught out in Las Vegas GP decision

Sergio Perez claims Red Bull was caught out in its strategy choice for the Las Vegas Grand Prix.

After being dumped in Q1 for the sixth time in 2024, Perez opted to start on the C3 hard tyres, opting to run long before switching to the mediums, but tyre graining prevented this from paying off.

The tyres did not degrade in the normal way, with the graining the main problem throughout the weekend, as Perez's strategy was abandoned with a lap 17 stop for mediums, meaning he would have to pit again for hards later on. 

He would eventually finish 10th, picking up his first grand prix point since the United States, but labelled his weekend "a total disaster."

"We were not expecting this level of degradation, and we thought starting on the hards would give us an opportunity to go very long and switch for the mediums for a relatively short stint," Perez told media including RacingNews365.

"But it wasn't the case, the track was very green in the beginning, and we grained the hard, which meant that we had to do a very long stint on the medium before going back to the hard.

"It was just a total disaster, unfortunately - but we were not expecting this level of degradation.

"We had a lot better pace than where we finished, we didn't maximise the result, but we got the strategy wrong.

"We compromised qualifying with the tyres, so we've got some work to do to make sure that these things don't happen."