Perez admits he is not “getting there” after difficult Las Vegas weekend

Having endured another tough race at Las Vegas, Red Bull driver Sergio Perez has acknowledged that he “is not getting there” at the moment, citing balance issues for his current struggles.

Red Bull struggled for pace in the three practice sessions, but Max Verstappen looked a lot more comfortable in his RB20 in qualifying, managing to secure a fifth spot on the grid for Saturday’s race.

The Dutch driver had an average start to hang on to P5, but he managed to pick off Alpine driver Pierre Gasly in the early stages of the 50-lap race. After the second round of pit stops, he found himself on the last spot of the rostrum, but he was then overtaken by the fast-charging Ferraris of Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc.

Despite dropping off the podium, Verstappen did what he needed to do to see off the challenge of his last remaining title rival, Lando Norris to clinch his fourth F1 world championship title.

His team-mate Sergio Perez started from P16 on the grid, opting for the hard compound for his first stint. With the majority of the field starting on the mediums and pitting early because of the much higher tyre degradation, the Mexican found himself in P2.

However, he fell back when he completed his first tyre change, but managed to climb through the midfield to finish in the last point-scoring position.

Commenting on his team-mate Max Verstappen’s fourth title, Perez said that the Dutchman has been exceptional, particularly on weekends when Red Bull did not have a competitive car.

“Congratulations to Max, I think he has had the best season I have ever seen from a driver, because a lot of the time we did not have the best car and Max made the difference a lot of weekends.

“The way he pushed the Team forwards, he was just a pure force and I think this has been the best year from him in the four we have been together. He has been tremendous, well done to him for all the success he has had, he deserves it.”

Reflecting on his race, Perez said that his pace was a step forward compared to what he was able to show in qualifying, but he pointed his fingers at the strategy, claiming that Red Bull did not execute his race well.

“For me today, I think the pace was the positive thing about the race, but unfortunately, we may have got the strategy wrong because we went out on the hard initially when the track was at it’s worse.

“The degradation was a lot higher than expected and we used the best tyre in the beginning unfortunately, so I had to do quite a long stint on the medium. I feel like we are getting there but we need that extra jump, and I don’t feel like we are getting there so, hopefully for the coming weekends we can come back stronger,” concluded the Mexican.