(Motorsports news) After colliding with Lando Norris at Turn 6, Perez was given a five-second penalty. It seemed as though the Red Bull driver had blocked up the bend to prevent Norris from going in. This guaranteed a wild race between Russell, Perez, and Charles Leclerc, who wanted to assist Ferrari defeat Mercedes by delivering a swing in the constructors’ title.
Leclerc wanted to assist Perez finish third in the race, so he allowed the Mexican to pass with the intention of giving him enough distance to get around Russell and avoid the penalty. It turned out to be in vain because Mercedes won the constructors’ championship by finishing second to Ferrari’s 1.1-second deficit.
Russell acknowledged that Mercedes had received a fortunate break from the incident, but he felt that overall, it was fair considering his own streak of bad luck. Indeed, the weekend was wonderful. It’s been a tremendously difficult season, so I’m really happy to end on this high,” Russell remarked. As a team, it’s been challenging, but individually, I feel like we’re not getting the outcomes we should have.
The tempo has been quite fast on numerous occasions, yet the outcomes just kept eluding us. “Lady Luck was maybe on our side slightly today with Checo’s penalty, but I think that more than made up for the other races this year.” Leclerc clarified that he had been in constant communication with the pitwall after learning of the penalty to see if he could do anything to assist Perez in clearing Russell by a minimum of five seconds.
In response to a question from Motorsport.com, the Monegasque said, “Quite a few laps before.” Basically, as soon as I knew about the five-second penalty. “After that, I kept inquiring how much separated George and Checo, and they replied that Checo had surpassed George. It was evident to me that Checo’s greatest opportunity was to steal the DRS from me and try to distance himself as much as possible from George, even though I knew he was behind me.
I was aware that my engineer and I had spoken extensively, and I informed him of my strategy as well. However, it didn’t succeed.”
