Sergio Perez was hoping to be joining his Red Bull team mate Max Verstappen on the podium at the end of Sunday's Dutch Grand Prix, but a pit stop call by the team followed by a frantic finish to the race saw him miss out.
Perez had started from seventh on the grid after another sub-par qualifying session, but put all that behind him by being the first driver to react and come into the pits for intermediates when rain started to fall at the start.
"They were super, super quick, so well done for the team on that," Perez said of the pit wall decision to put him on the inters straight away.
“It was Sergio’s call that he wanted to pit," insisted Red Bull team principal Christian Horner. "That paid dividends for him because he was the first one, certainly of the front-leading cars, to jump onto the inter.”
Perez ended up in the lead of the race well ahead of Zhou Guanyu and Pierre Gasly, but Verstappen was soon on the comeback trail and back up to second place, rapidly eating into Perez' lead.
"We were expecting rain, the team was telling me that there was more rain coming," Perez told the media in the paddock when asked about the difference in pace between himself and Verstappen at this point.
"The track was on the dry side, so if I were to push I would just have destroyed completely the intermediate tyre," he said. "Unfortunately we didn't get it right that there was more rain coming on the inter.
"[If we had], we could have pushed more on that first stint and probably kept the lead for longer," he said. "Unfortunately our great call in the beginning turned out to be not so great in the end."
When the time came to put their drivers back on slick tyres, the team opted to pit Verstappen first allowing him to undercut Perez and take back the lead.
“I didn’t know anything at the time," Perez admitted when asked about the team's strategy by Sky Sports F1 after the finish. "Those things, we get to review them in the meeting and understand what are the reasons behind it.
“There are obviously reasons for that," he continued. "It’s always a strategic decision, you know. The team has a wider view of what’s going on in the race.”
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner insisted the call "was a no-brainer" for the team as a whole, and not about favouring Verstappen over Perez.
"Checo had the target to pull a gap on the cars behind him, but Max’s pace as he came through the field was such that I think at one point he took seven seconds out of him in three laps, and was coming very fast.”
Fernando Alonso and Pierre Gasly were also closing up behind Verstappen, forcing Red Bull's hand when it came deciding the pit stop strategy.
“Had we pitted Checo first they would have both undercut Max, so we’d have gone from a net one-two to a net one-four. So we pitted Max first with the risk being that he’d undercut Checo but we’d end up as a team as first and second."
After that it looked like a straight run to the finish in second place. But a sudden downpour with eight laps to go threw the kitchen sink among the bedraggled pigeons and ended up depriving Perez of his podium.
Even after switching back to intermediates tyres, Perez ended up aqua-planing off at turn 1 and making light contact with the barrier. "[Conditions] were changing quite a lot, especially coming into turn 1, with the rivers around
"As I was braking, I could feel those rivers and unfortunately I lost the car, went straight into the wall, but luckily managed to rotate and keep going.”
The mishap meant that when the race was red flagged he was shown in third behind Fernando Alonso for the rolling restart once the rain stopped and track conditions improved.
But further bad news was to come after Perez learned he had been given a five place post-race penalty for speeding on pit lane.
“As I was coming into the pit lane, it was completely flooded," he reported. " I ended up crashing into the wall, and over-sped, I guess, on the entry. A bit of a shame."
The speeding penalty meant he was given a five second post-race penalty which dropped him behind Alpine's Pierre Gasly in the final classification, leaving him off the podium.
Perez said it was still “a good team result” for Red Bull but was clearly disappointed with the outcome from a personal point of view. "It's a shame we ended up losing the podium, because I feel like we really deserve it today."
Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter
