F1 News
Pérez happy for Stroll to score points despite his own pace being "quite poor"
Nicolás Quarles van Ufford
Racing Point driver Sergio Pérez had a poor showing in Canada himself, finishing 12th at the team's home race, but the Mexican was happy for his teammate Lance Stroll to secure two points for the team by finishing ninth.
Pérez started ahead of Stroll on the grid but the two drivers were on different strategies, with Stroll starting on hard tyres and switching to mediums later and Pérez doing the opposite. As it turned out, the very long first stint of Stroll turned out to be the better strategy, with the Canadian getting as high up as eighth after starting 17th.
The 21-year-old eventually finished ninth, three places ahead of Pérez in P12. The Mexican realises this was a team effort to secure any sort of points.
“Not such a good day for me - but a good day for the team, scoring two points with Lance," the eight-time podium sitter said after the race.
"We knew that getting into the points was going to be tricky, so we went with different strategies to try to maximise the opportunities. As it turned out, Lance was on the better strategy - but you only know which was the best strategy after the race."
Pérez was also knocked out of qualifying in Q1, qualifying 16th but starting 15th because of a grid penalty for Kevin Magnussen. A weekend to forget altogether for the Mexican.
"The whole weekend wasn't great for me. The pace today was quite poor - but I was always stuck in traffic, so the temperatures were on the limit and we couldn't do much about that. In the first stint, I suffered with the high track temperature, but, more than that, I could only put pressure on [Daniil] Kvyat ahead for two laps before I had to look after the brakes, which made things even harder.
"As a team we minimised the damage of the weekend - and that's important at the tough races.”
