Written by Carl Hilliard, Edited by Meghana Sree
Red Bull’s Sergio Perez admitted that Ferrari and Carlos Sainz would have won the F1 2024 Australian Grand Prix even if Max Verstappen had stayed in the fight.
Sainz took the lead of the race during lap two, with the ever dominant Verstappen suffering a rare failure with his RB20’s brakes, forcing an early retirement. This paid dividends for Sainz and Ferrari, who took victory in Melbourne, with teammate Charles Leclerc coming home in second place.
Given the Italian team’s performance over the course of the race weekend, Perez believes that Ferrari had the upper hand all throughout.
When asked by the media if Ferrari would have triumphed even without his teammate’s retirement, the Mexican driver said “absolutely.”
“I think just as a team, we just didn’t have the pace today,” Perez continued, “We didn’t have the pace throughout the weekend.
“We were struggling already from Friday and we never got on top of the management of tyres.”
With Verstappen out of the race early on, Perez needed to step up for his team, but was only able to bring home a fifth place finish, something that the Mexican will surely be disappointed with.
“We were struggling early on”, Perez added. “We could see that Ferrari and McLaren were a step ahead of us. I think we just couldn’t get the balance in a window. There is some work to do for the coming races.”
“Just a very bad weekend. Plenty of understanding for us to do”, the Red Bull driver concluded.