Sergio Perez did good to salvage a point in the last weekend’s Qatar Grand Prix after the Red Bull driver was thrice caught out by track limit rules which he branded “a joke”.
Perez had qualified 13th for the race at Lusail but started from the pit lane following Red Bull’s decision to build up a new chassis for the Mexican after his crash in Saturday’s sprint, a task that also included fitting a new power unit.
Perez’s efforts could have perhaps carried him further up the running order but for three five-second time penalties that were handed to him in the race by the stewards for exceeding track limits.
The latter had been changed at Lusail’s Turns 12 and 13 to encourage drivers to steer clear of the sharp edge kerbs that threatened the safety of Pirelli’s tyres as diagnosed by the company after Friday’s opening day of running at Lusail.
Perez claimed that visually identifying the new track limit had been challenging in the race although he admitted that he could have done a better job.
“It was, for me, impossible to see,” he said. “I was taking so much margin, giving up so much lap time for it, but I still got more.
“For me it was very difficult to judge, but there were drivers who were able to do that, so I don’t think I did a good enough job in that regard.”
But a frustrated Perez also felt that implementing last minutes changes to the track limit policy made F1 look "bad".
“I also think it was a joke what we ended up doing with the track limits,” he said. “First of all, I think that it is really bad that we come up with a solution last minute to police it. Then to start giving penalties away.
“It was very frustrating, as you can imagine. A really long afternoon, and I was very disappointed that I let my team down.
“It was a very poor weekend overall with the incident yesterday, which made it even worse today.
“Plenty of things to look at, and make sure we put everything in place for the coming races.”
Perez’s unproductive weekend, which Red Bull team boss Christian Horner labeled as “horrible”, was somewhat mitigated by Lewis Hamilton’s first corner DNF in Qatar, a retirement that prevented the Mercedes driver from inching closer to Perez’s runner-up spot in the Drivers’ championship.
Perez says his priority in the final leg of the season is to hold on to second in the standings.
“Yes, that is the absolute target," he said. “I have had a few bad races lately, but I think once we correct that, I should be able to re-find our form.”
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