FLOYD ON F1: Sergio Perez is starting to feel the pressure

It was obviously one of those days when the infamous red mist descended over the F1 drivers eyes. It not only impaired visual acuity, but also appears to affect cerebral calculative ability.

If you watched the Mexican Grand Prix last Sunday you will be fully aware of the incident I am referring to. Three combatants, Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, and the Red Bull drivers Max Verstappen and local hero Sergio Perez, attempted to negotiate turn one on lap one in a three abreast formation, resulting inevitably in only two exiting the corner.

The third dramatically departed the race to the obvious dismay of an entire nation, the collective anguished groans of the capacity crowd echoed around the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez.

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F1 pressure

All who follow F1 will be aware of the pressure on the shoulders of the Mexican, due to his questionable performance in recent races, rumours of an early retirement or premature termination of his contract appear daily in the media.

Car setup issues have been cited as one major reason for his difficulties and despite all the efforts of his team, including psychological evaluation, Perez has continued to struggle.

Determined to prove he still has what it takes, he set a high goal, to take victory in his home grand prix. His practice sessions and qualifying resulted in a fifth spot on the grid just 0.25 seconds off the pole position time. His excellent race start moved him up to challenge in the first corner, but this is where it all went wrong.

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Taking a risk

“To be honest, I really feel it was a racing incident. The gap was there and obviously as a driver you take a risk, going three cars into Turn 1 with these wide cars. I took a risk and ended up paying a high price for it, but I was also honestly not expecting Charles to brake that late, as he was in the middle so he had a bit less room for manoeuvring,” he said post-race.

“I was ahead of him, I thought he was going to bail out a bit more but, obviously in those decisions everything happens really late and, yeah, it just happened everything a little bit too late and unfortunately I had a lot of damage on my car.”

So much damage it meant retirement.

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Resurgent Hamilton

With the gap between Perez and Hamilton now down to just 20 points and three races remaining, the Mexican’s hold on second place in the title race is somewhat tenuous. On current form, the resurgent Mercedes driver could take the place away, which would certainly not help Perez’s fight to hold his seat.

The next race, the last of the triple header and the 2023 Sprint events, moves to Brazil for the Grand Prix de Sao Paulo.

Once again teams face just one hour of practice followed by Grand Prix qualifying on Friday. The Sprint shootout and Sprint follow on Saturday, with the main race at 7pm on Sunday.