Red Bull’s Sergio Perez has revealed the reason behind his prolonged reaction to the lights at the pit exit during the Formula 1 Sprint race in Qatar on Saturday.
Perez was knocked out of Sprint Qualifying in the first session, which prompted Red Bull to make set-up changes to the car ahead of the Sprint.
This meant the Mexican driver would start the race from the pitlane, but as the green light came on Perez remained stationary for a few seconds.
Franco Colapinto, who also started from the pitlane as the suspension on his Williams was changed, reacted quickly to go around the slow-moving Red Bull.
After the Sprint, Red Bull Team Principal Christian Horner appeared bemused as he claimed that Perez had been “caught napping” at the pitlane exit.
However, Perez has explained his actions to the media afterwards, claiming he intended to wait after the green light came on.
“Yeah, we wanted to have a big gap,” he told media including Motorsport Week.
“One of the reasons we started from the pitlane was to not to recover all the positions and get into the points – we knew we were quite far back and we wanted a big gap to the people ahead to have as much clear traffic as possible.
When asked if it was unfortunate to be behind Colapinto, Perez added: “Yeah, of course.
“Luckily he managed to get through, but it was important and we tried a lot of things.
“But we wanted to have that gap to be in clean air for most of the race.”
Red Bull and Perez abandon Sprint race for testing
Despite feeling confused by the actions of his driver, Horner did confirm that Red Bull planned to use Perez’s Sprint race as a test session for the team.
Horner added that it needed to gather some “useful data” during a race when it looked unlikely that Perez would be collecting any points.
Asked about why he treated the session like testing, Perez responded: “Well sometimes with this short racing, when you are out of position, it just makes sense to prepare for the rest of the weekend as there are not a lot of points and the main race is tomorrow.”
Ultimately, it did work for him as he managed to qualify inside the top 10 for Sunday’s race, as Perez expressed his delight with the progress made after qualifying.
“I think unfortunately I didn’t go as aggressive as Max [Verstappen] did on the set-up side,” he reviewed.
“But I think it was good progress and hopefully tomorrow in the race it will be a lot more together and the balance will be working a lot better.”
Verstappen, meanwhile, stormed to pole position in Qatar before it was taken away from him due to a one-place grid penalty for impeding Mercedes’ George Russell.
Red Bull remains unclear as to whether its qualifying pace will transfer to the Grand Prix or not, as Verstappen lines up from second on the grid and Perez down in ninth.
READ MORE: Red Bull reveals Sergio Perez role in Max Verstappen’s Qatar F1 turnaround
