Sergio Perez blown away after watching what Max Verstappen did at Imola

20 May 2024 , 22:02

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Max Verstappen impressed Sergio Perez (Image: Alexander Trienitz)

Red Bull driver Sergio Perez was blown away by teammate Max Verstappen's efforts in the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix.

The Formula 1 world champion earned his fifth win of the season as he finished ahead of Lando Norris by less than a second at Imola. The Dutch driver started the race from pole position but saw a stiff challenge from the McLaren driver, who earned his first ever win during the Miami Grand Prix two weeks before.

Verstappen had been able to build an advantage over the opening 50 laps of his drive, but saw his afternoon complicated after a tyre change. That saw Norris put pressure on the 26-year-old, with Verstappen struggling to find grip utilising the hard tyres.

It was an effort that impressed Perez. The Mexican racer believes it was Verstappen's best weekend of recent times.

“We knew it was going to be a hard day today as the whole weekend was compromised from qualifying," he said. "Imola is a difficult track to overtake on so this was the maximum we could do today, especially we were struggling with traffic in the beginning on my first stint and on the hard tyres we had no margin to play around with the balance.

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"We knew that McLaren were the fastest but Max had one of the best weekends I’ve seen from him in a while, so a lot of praise for that and this was a great result for us. We have a few things we need to analyse and certainly some work to do as we head into the next race, but I’m looking forward to Monaco and hopefully we will continue our strong season and get some good momentum back."

Norris believed that even one more lap might have been enough time to beat his rival and to move one spot up the podium. "I was just praying for one more lap," he said.

"I did everything I could and I was pushing like hell to get there and catch up and have a chance. But as soon as you get within two seconds you start to lose downforce and the tyres start to overheat again. I struggled for a couple of laps... the last lap I managed to get there.

"Seven-tenths, one more lap, at least he would have had to defend into turn one and maybe something could have come from that, but it was one lap too late. It's a shame, but it is what it is... We were expecting it to me a little bit colder than it was today, so we set up the car more for colder conditions rather than hot and I paid the price."

Scott Trotter