In Shanghai, two drivers, Leclerc from Ferrari and Norris from McLaren, waited longer to make their first pit stops. They used this strategy to switch to a one-stop plan when there was a safety car on the track. The safety car came out because Valtteri Bottas’ Sauber had a problem.
Perez and his teammate Verstappen had already made a pit stop earlier when the race was still going. They had to make another pit stop to change to hard tires so they could finish the race.
Verstappen was very fast, so he stayed in the lead. But Perez had to pass Leclerc and Norris after his pit stop.
Perez said, “At that time, the gap was already big. I knew it would be hard to catch Norris because his pace was good in the first part of the race. We had similar speeds. But when you spend a lot of time-fighting with another driver, as I did with Charles, it’s hard to catch up. You use up your tires a lot, and they don’t recover. The track here wears out tires quickly, and I paid for it. But I had to pass Charles, and it was tough.”
Team boss Horner agreed with Perez that the safety car came out at the wrong time. He said, “The safety car came out at a bad time. We had to change our strategy because of it, and Perez lost track position. He ended up behind Lando and Charles. He tried hard to pass Charles. Maybe he used up his tires too much at that point, which made it hard to pass Charles later. I think if there was no safety car, we could have finished first and second.”
