Sergio Perez did not really have a quintessential debut with Red Bull Racing as his qualifying didn’t go as planned. Red Bull took a risk with their tyres and installed medium ones. However, the Mexican failed to reach Q3 with them.
Helmut Marko believes that this incident was a result of poor planning by the team.
“During qualifying we should have put him on the soft tyre in the second session, that was our mistake,” he admitted in an interview.
“We put Perez on the medium tyre then so we would have strategic options left. If Perez had started from fourth or fifth on the medium tyre he could have given Valtteri Bottas a hard time.
“Had he started on the soft tyre, he would probably have lost so much time on pit stop strategy that an attack on the Mercedes driver would be difficult.”
After encountering a battery problem, Perez had to start from the pit lane. But he managed to fight his way to the front.
“It was the first race of the year, so it was mainly getting used to for him. When Perez had free air, he was just as fast as Verstappen,” Marko said.
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