In the round-up: Sergio Perez admits his poor performance at Suzuka has left him with much to reflect on.
In brief
“A poor weekend overall” – Perez
Perez was consistently off the pace of his team mate Max Verstappen during practice and qualified over seven tenths of a second slower than him. In the race he was blamelessly involved in a collision approaching turn one, but after returning to the track picked up a penalty for overtaking under Safety Car conditions. He then caused a collision with Kevin Magnussen which ended his race.
“I think we need to review the whole weekend to understand what happened because it certainly was a poor weekend overall,” said Perez. “So there’s something to understand.”
He indicated he wasn’t entirely happy with the set-up he settled on last weekend. “There are a few directions that we took on Friday that we need to analyse and see what we are able to improve in that regard,” said Perez.
No car would have survived lap one incident, says Albon
Alexander Albon says his lap one collision in the Japanese Grand Prix was always likely to prove terminal.
The Williams driver was hit by Valtteri Bottas, who in turn had been squeezed left by Esteban Ocon, as the race began. Although Albon initially tried to continue, he retired on lap 26 because of the damage to his FW45.
“No car is strong enough to survive these kind of crashes,” said Albon. “I had damage picked up from lap one and then that was it really game over. We tried to push on and see if the race would unfold. A bit of a shame. I think maybe points were possible.”
Sixth possible at Suzuka, says Alonso
Fernando Alonso believes Aston Martin did not extract their full potential at the Japanese Grand Prix. He finished eighth after starting tenth, but ran as high as sixth after a strong start. But an early first pit stop on lap 12 dropped Alonso into traffic.
“We had good pace in the race,” said Alonso. “I think we didn’t optimise the strategy, maybe we stopped too soon at the beginning.
“That compromised a little bit the final result, but we were fast and the pace was a little bit better than expected. I think P6 was possible.”
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Links
Motor racing links of interest:
Toto-Machtwort aus dem Home-Office (Auto Motor und Sport – German)
‘Toto Wolff, who wasn’t at Suzuka for last weekend’s race, was involved in their strategy calls and instructed that George Russell should let Lewis Hamilton pass him when the pair were under attack from Carlos Sainz Jnr.’
Norris: ‘You want to be able to race but you have to drive at 95%’ (The Guardian)
‘You are not driving at 100% because one slide and you’re done. You are just managing your tyres and your temperatures. It is frustrating, it feels like you are going so slowly. You just want to be able to race closer but as soon as you push, you light up the rears once and it’s game over.’
Construction worker dies after workplace accident at Bellagio Fountains (Las Vegas Review-Journal)
‘Work is currently underway in front of the Bellagio in preparation for November’s Formula One Las Vegas Grand Prix.’
‘Realistically, with the performance we had this weekend, we achieved the maximum possible result with Fernando this afternoon – there wasn’t much more he could have done out there.’
‘Our main issue was the pace of the medium compound in the middle stint. We had high degradation, and this was where the damage was done. This will be the main focus of the post-race work, as other teams were able to make it work.’
“Our team proved once again to be able to recover from less-than-ideal qualifying placements, which is why we must look at the next races with optimism: we are not too far from our direct competitors, as it is often just a matter of hundredths of a second.”
Monza Race 1 Highlights (Euroformula Open via YouTube)
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On this day in motorsport
- 35 years ago today Alain Prost won the Portuguese Grand Prix but fumed over team mate Ayrton Senna’s driving tactics after his championship rival pushed him towards the pit wall
