Harshvardhan Thakur
Red bull driver Sergio Perez has taken a step back from the comments he made during the Sao Paulo Grand Prix.
Red bull was involved in a rather controversial moment during the Brazilian GP. The team had ordered Max Verstappen to give up his 6th place to Sergio Perez behind him. The Dutchman, however, refused to give the place to his teammate.
This led to some intriguing radio exchanges between the two drivers. This rather controversial moment of the race forced red bull to release a statement on the matter too. The team issued a statement on Thursday claiming to move forward from the incident.
The statement clearly stated the incident to be nothing more than a miscommunication. It further claimed Max Verstappen to be a “open and fair team player”.
Sergio Perez ‘regrets’ saying those comments in the heat of the moments
Now, Sergio Perez has also made an official statement regarding the matter. The Mexican blamed emotions claiming he ‘regrets’ what he said about Verstappen:
Perez said this ahead of the Abu Dhabi GP:
“Obviously F1, it’s a very emotional sport,” Perez told the TV media.
“And there is no other sport where you can speak yourself live, and it’s only in F1 this happens. So there’s a lot of emotions going on in a lot of things to say.
“I obviously regret a lot of things I said after the race because I am back with Max in the relationship we used to have, and we are both on the team and everyone is ready to move forwards.”
Perez further explained that the situation could have been handled better:
“Everyone was put in a very difficult situation there, within Max, within the team, myself,” the Mexican said.
“I think we could have handled the situation better. We will obviously learn from it and do things differently in the future.
“And that’s the way you should be – every team around the paddock is learning.
“Luckily it was just the last 100 metres of the lap I found out he wouldn’t give me back the position. It obviously was a bad feeling.
“But I think I’m able to put all of this behind us. My priority is to have a good environment to work in and to be able to trust my team-mate, to trust my team. And that’s my priority.”
Verstappen targets the toxic F1 fans online
The teammate of Sergio Perez, Max Verstappen, on the other hand, targeted the toxic online fans – the fans that are spreading hate targeting him. The Dutchman mentioned being fed up with the online abuse which is received even by his family.
“When your own sister writes [to] you and it’s getting way too much and you have to do something about it, I think that says enough. Yes, it does get to me because you cannot attack my family,” said Verstappen
“You don’t even know the real story, so you don’t need to write a story. I’m just a little fed up with all this b******* just going around all the time.
“As soon as something negative [happens] it needs to be highlighted and it’s pretty sickening, to be honest, being part of all that.”
Nevertheless, the matter of Brazilian GP looks to have settled and is now a talk of the past. But the question stands that what reasons Verstappen had clarified to deny Perez the position?
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