Perez received four penalty points as he retires from “poor” Japanese GP

The Mexican received two time penalties for an on-track collision and a safety car violation during the Japanese GP.

   Sergio Perez received four penalty points from the referees for several incidents at the Japanese Grand Prix which he labeled “bad”. The Mexican fought his way through the field after lap one contact with Carlos Sainz and Lewis Hamilton damaged his front wing.

   He ran under the early safety car for repairs, but passed Fernando Alonso just before entering the pit lane and was given a five-second time penalty and two penalty points by the stewards. Recovering and fighting for 11th place, he made contact with Kevin Magnussen at the hairpin, causing further damage to his car and earning a five-second time penalty in addition to two other penalty points.

   He retired the car before the team sent him back to “appeal” the penalty so it wouldn’t carry to Qatar, but it was Red Bull’s first DNF in an otherwise dominant season. “[I had] a terrible start, basically going into Turn 1, I was just a passenger, I had Sainz on the right, Lewis on the left and they just took the whole front plate off.

   “It’s really hard to judge, but as soon as I went into the second corner I didn’t have the front end. We changed the front wing and I still didn’t have the front end, so I think the car was more damaged.”

   Pérez wants to revise over the weekend Perez will be keen to take stock of the weekend after looking unable to match team-mate Max Verstappen’s dominant performance, which gave Red Bull a sixth constructors’ title.

   Verstappen could end the 2023 drivers’ championship next time in the Qatar sprint with a 177-point lead, with 180 still to go as Perez wants to understand what went wrong.

   “We have to look at the whole weekend to understand what happened because it was definitely a bad weekend,” he explained. “On Friday we took some instructions that we have to analyze and see what we can improve on that.”