Fight with Leclerc had benefit for Perez: 'Learned a lot about the Ferrari'

Sergio Perez was engaged in a battle with Charles Leclerc in the early stages of the Bahrain Grand Prix. As a result, he learned a lot about the strengths and weaknesses of Ferrari's SF-23, he explained at the post-race press conference.

Perez learned a lot about Ferrari

Perez started the race second behind teammate Max Verstappen, but was behind after a poor start, and Leclerc got away better with his Ferrari. Although there was killer pace in the RB19, it took Perez a while to regain the spot. As an added bonus, he said he learned a lot about his rival's car.

At his first pit stop, Perez changed to softs, before overtaking Leclerc on the straight. The Red Bull driver stressed that in the 13 laps he drove behind the Ferrari, he learned a lot about the rival team's car.

"I actually learned a lot about their car, you know: where they are weak, where they're strong, or stronger than us," Perez explained, adding that he will share the information in detail with his engineers during the briefing.

As Verstappen disappeared on the horizon, Perez lost time to Leclerc. "It was really difficult to get by him. He had the new tyres. So you could see the difference on that first stint," he explained. "And as soon as I was getting a bit closer to him, trying to attack him earlier on, I will just deg and destroy my tyres. So I had to be really patient and get my way through it. "

Once past the Ferrari driver, it appeared that Perez too had a good pace. At that point, however, according to the Mexican, it was too late to try to close the gap to Verstappen. "Once that happened, we basically just maintained the gap throughout the race. So we had no chance to fight for the win," Perez concluded.