Sergio Perez earned the wrath of both Lando Norris & Kevin Magnussen after what he labelled a “disastrous” Japanese Grand Prix.
On the day Red Bull wrapped up the Constructors’ Championship following Max Verstappen’s 13th win of the year, the Mexican had his worst race of the season.
Checo’s trouble began at the start as he made contact with Carlos Sainz and Lewis Hamilton before picking up his first penalty of the day for overtaking behind the Safety Car while entering and exiting the pits.
Perez then collided with Magnussen at the hairpin in what the Dane called a “desperate” move before holding up Norris under the resulting Virtual Safety Car, triggering lots of “shouting” and “swearing” from the McLaren driver.
“It was just a disastrous weekend,” he admitted post-race. “It all started into Turn 1 with a really bad start.
“I was squeezed out and I was just a passenger there in a sandwich. I think we carried a lot of damage in the car as well and that just made it a lot harder for us.
“We changed the front wing and I still had no front end, so I think there were a lot more things damaged on the car.
“I was struggling quite a lot on the braking with the front end. I just wouldn’t stop in time and it was my mistake, obviously.”
“We need to review the whole weekend to find out what happened because it was certainly a poor weekend overall, so something to understand.”
After retiring following the Magnussen clash, Perez’s day took a strange twist as Red Bull opted to send him out for two laps almost 45 minutes later to serve a five-second penalty he had been given.
“The only decent thing we managed to get out of today was not carrying a penalty through into the next race in Qatar,” said team boss Christian Horner, with Perez likely to have picked up a three-place grid drop had he not served the penalty.
“I mean, it was it was a shocker of a race for him today,” he conceded.
