Red Bull has revealed that a damaged tyre is what caused Sergio Perez's early pitstop during the Italian Grand Prix, triggering his comeback drive to sixth place. The Mexican had to pit early on after locking up into Turn 1 battling with Carlos Sainz on the opening lap, which caused damage to his Medium tyres. Red Bull Team Principal Christian Horner confirmed that Perez suffered from vibrations from the tyres and elected to pit him on safety grounds for a set of Hard tyres, with the attempt to run him until the end. "On the first lap he had a big lockup and then he had a massive vibration as a result, and we were started getting into danger zones in our thresholds. So that's why we we pitted him onto the Hard [tyre]" said Horner to media, including RacingNews365.com . When he emerged from the pits, smoke started to appear out of front right wheel which the team later determined was a piece of debris that got lodged in the brake ducts. Horner added: "Some debris also gone into the [brake] duct, which was why that front right was smoking quite a lot. "Obviously it was gonna take a little while for that to burn off for the next couple of laps and the temperatures came back under control."
Perez nearly suffered brake failure due to debris
Perez disclosed that he had to manage the brakes when he rejoined due to the debris, which cost him lap time as he feared they were going to fail. Speaking to media after the race, including RacingNews365.com , the Mexican said: "My race got compromised fairly early with the front right brake disc being on fire. "I had to manage massively the brakes, because it was very critical at those points, otherwise we would've lost them. "I was doing massive lift and coast, I was losing a lot of laptime so everything just got compromised on that first stint." After running 35 laps on the Hard tyre, Red Bull switched him to the Soft towards the end to attempt to overtake Lewis Hamilton for a top five finish towards the end. He managed to set the fastest lap of the race as he closed the gap, but any attempt to progress further than sixth was foiled when the race ended under Safety Car due to the difficult recovery of Daniel Ricciardo's stricken McLaren.
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