Perez happy to recover from ‘worst’ career start into points

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Sergio Perez has labelled his launch at the German Grand Prix as “the worst start in my whole career”, which made him all the happier to recover into the points.

Starting from ninth on the grid, Perez finished the first lap in 16th place and was forced to fight his way back through the field. Eventually taking tenth place with a late move on Fernando Alonso - who was struggling with high tyre wear and fuel consumption - Perez

“It’s safe to say [it] was the worst start in my whole career," Perez said. "I had a lot of wheelspin at the start and dropped back to P16 - so it was a long fight back through the pack.

"The team had to think on their feet and tweak the strategy to get me back into a competitive position. Degradation was quite high, especially when following other cars, and I spent a lot of time in the middle of the race fighting with Fernando [Alonso].

"In the last few laps I was running out of tyres, but I knew Fernando was in a similar situation, so when I saw an opportunity I knew I had to take it. I honestly didn’t think we would score points after turn one, but we did it."

Having salvaged a point, Perez was keen to praise for Force India for its competitive year so far, with the team just 15 points behind Williams in the constructors' standings.

"We go on holiday now, proud of the incredible work we have done as a team in the first half of the season. I am confident we have a lot of good days ahead of us in the final nine races, but for now it’s important to get some rest.”

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.