FIA race stewards have decided that Red Bull driver Sergio Perez will face no further action over an incident that took place during today's qualifying session for the Australian Grand Prix at Albert Park, Melbourne.
Perez set a new personal best lap time during Q2 despite brief yellow flags being shown after George Russell ran wide and went off track in turn 9. But after reviewing the available telemetry and video evidence, the stewards said they were happy with the way Perez handled the incident.
"Compared to his previous lap, he lifted 70 metres earlier, braked 50 metres earlier, and carried 14kph less speed into the corner," a statement from the stewards concluded. "As a result of these actions, the stewards conclude that Perez acted appropriately to the situation and take no further action."
Ferrari's Charles Leclerc and Alfa Romeo's Guanyu Zhou also saw the stewards after being reported for driving unnecessarily slowly on an in-lap following red flags for Nicholas Latifi's accident in Q1, but the stewards accepted their explanations and similarly decided no further action was required meaning Leclerc kept his pole position.
However AlphaTauri driver Yuki Tsunoda did receive a reprimand (his third of the season) for a similar incident, after the stewards determined that in his case he "drove a slow in-lap at the end of the session without other traffic that impacted his driving. The required minimum lap time was breached without good or apparent reason."
Having been cleared by the stewards, Perez keeps third place on the grid, although the driver admitted that the team had made the wrong call on strategy in the final round and had been affected by red flags and visibility issues.
“I regret a bit the decision to go into Q3 with our strategy on the tyres," he told the media afterwards. "Q1, Q2 things were going good [but] with all the red flags it’s always very hard to keep the momentum going.
"There were red flags on a couple of occasions which meant we didn’t get to experiment with the tyres. It's always hard with strategy when you get red flags.
"We went for three laps and carried that fuel, only to find out at the end that the double push didn’t work any better than just setting one lap," he explained. "It wasn’t the right thing to do and that cost us a couple of tenths."
Red Bull boss Christian Horner added that Perez had also suffered from a brief drop in power from the MGU-K during his run. "Checo had a small derate on his first lap, and carried an extra tenth of fuel as well because he wanted to do three laps."
Perez was also affected by problems with the setting sun. With the session running late due to the red flag stoppages, drivers found themselves blinded by the head-on glare in certain corners during Q3.
"It was coming down a lot and getting darker so we were playing with the visors," the Mexican said. "On my first Q3 run one I was completely dark and there was no sun, so I went back. And then there was a lot of sun. Just didn't get it right."
In the end Perez was almost four tenths off the pole time set by Leclerc, and was also pipped by his team mate Max Verstappen.
"Charles put in a tremendous lap. He put everything together and I didn’t," Perez acknowledged. "But I think P3 is a decent start for tomorrow.
"Hopefully in the race we can be a lot closer, make it hard for them, have a strong race and enjoy it.
"I think we've got a nice race ahead of us, so first of all I hope we make a lot of Aussies very happy because there are full grandstands already on Saturday."
Perez' hopes have also been boosted by finding the RB18 much more to his liking than its predecessor. "I like this car. We are all learning every time we drive these new cars, and tomorrow in the race I want to make a big step.”
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