Perez explains what he learned from his crash in Monaco

Sergio Perez is aiming for his third win of the season in Spain. The goal is to finish ahead of Max Verstappen anyway to narrow the gap in the world championship. For the 33-year-old driver, the main thing is to forget his mistake in Monaco as soon as possible.

How hard is it to let it all go what happened last week? "It's hard, but for me the most important of these things is to accept when you do a mistake as a driver, put your hand up, apologise to your team first of all, and then learn from it and understand what happened, and I've done that."

The follow-up question is, of course, easy to guess. Perez has to answer what he actually learned then. "I've learned basically that I should have taken things a bit easier. Everything was too late, it was a combination of things. We decided last minute to go for that lap and then we had the Alpine just in front of us which took all the…tail wind on the braking. Not taking the last minute decisions will help us as well, but I should have done a better job at pre-empting the situation."

Perez vs Verstappen

Speaking to GPblog and others, Perez reveals that despite one of his worse weekends ever, he is confident he can challenge Verstappen. "I've been a match to Max, since the beginning of the season, you know, in one way or another, sometimes better, worse. And it's what I believe is what I believe that you have to be."

The Mexican veteran wants to go for his first world championship, but he faces a tough challenge alongside Verstappen. "I think being teammates with Max, it's probably the toughest things you, the toughest thing you can have because it's a driver that is on most form of all, but I do believe that it's possible to be [beating Max over a whole season]."