Perez retains P8 despite penalty for 'divebomb' on Albon

Alex Albon came off the worse in a clash with Sergio Perez in the latter part of the Singapore Grand Prix, but the five-second penalty handed to the Red Bull driver had no bearing on the latter's classification.

Perez crossed he finish line P8, but the Mexican's ten-second advantage over AlphaTauri rookie Liam Lawson was enough for him to safeguard his position.

Perez and Albon were battling for position in the closing stages of the event at Marina Bay when the Red Bull charger dived up the inside of the Williams at Turn 13.

It was an optimistic move however by Perez as the pair made contact and Albon was thrown off-line, forcing the hapless Williams driver to lock up to avoid the outside wall.

While Perez survived the encounter, Albon dropped all the down to P13, eventually finishing P11 just outside the points.

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The stewards deemed that Perez was predominately to blame for the collision as it was an "optimistic late manoeuvre that could be defined as "diving in", and that there was nothing that [Albon] could have done to avoid the collision."

Albon rued the incident which he believes cost him some points.

"We did the race perfectly," he said. "I was running P9, was about to overtake Liam for P8, then I got dive-bombed by Checo into Turn 13.

"He T-boned me and I went straight on into the wall, I had to reverse out, I dropped to 13th and I finished 11th so we should have scored points today and we didn't."

In addition to his inconsequential five-second penalty, Perez was also handed a penalty point on his Super Licence.

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