F1 | Red Bull, Sergio Perez: “I'm frustrated, we were fighting for the podium”

Great race by Sergio Perez, which ended, however, only in ninth place. The Mexican, also ninth in qualifying, starts from eighth place thanks to Bottas' penalty, who drops to seventeenth. His Red Bull immediately regained the position on Fernando Alonso at the start, and it was with the Spaniard and Charles Leclerc's Ferrari that Checo would engage in several battles during the course of the race. He is fighting for third position when the rain persistently falls again on the Sochi Olympic circuit: Verstappen is the first to return to the pits, with Perez following two laps away, but in the general chaos he loses positions. In the end he was only ninth, a result that doesn't do justice to the Mexican's performance.

"We were fighting for the podium today, so I decided to take a risk by staying on track with the slicks, instead of returning to the pits to fit the intermediates. In the first and third sectors the track was quite fair and I could maintain the temperature of the tyres, so if he had stopped we would have had an advantage on the slicks compared to our opponents on the intermediates. – explained Checo – in hindsight it wasn't the right choice and the timing of the rain meant some were luckier than others. We could have achieved a podium on pure merit, despite a slow pitstop we managed to make our way onto the grid, but sometimes that's how it goes. The problem in the pit wasn't a human error, I spoke to my pit crew after the race to understand if they were okay, because we were all disappointed. As a team we still score several points today and yes, it's frustrating for me, but I think I handled the car as best as I could, which is promising for the next round in Turkey".