Sergio Perez: “Today was a very crazy race”

Sergio Perez bounced back from a recent run of disappointments to take an impressive third place in Canada after charging from 15th on the grid.

Like runner-up Romain Grosjean, he did it on one stop. However, while the Lotus driver started on supersofts and went to the soft, Perez did it the other way around, starting on the softs.

He pitted on lap 41, leaving himself with a marathon 29 lap run to the flag on the supersofts. He kept them in good shape and in the closing laps he was able to get ahead of Vettel and Alonso to claim second.

Without his qualifying crash – now confirmed as being due to a steering problem – Perez could well have been on the podium in Monaco, so the result came as a timely boost.

“It was a great race for the whole team,” said Perez. “After such a disappointing qualifying that we had yesterday, with so little pace as well – we didn’t have the pace we wanted to – so we had to fight in a different way with the strategy, and try to make it work and make it happen with the strategy.

“We didn’t have any reference on the long runs. The long runs we did with the tyres, it was 10-15°C less track temperature. So, it was a lottery, basically, but I think the team has done a great job with the stop and the strategy, myself too, keeping the tyres alive and being so consistent.

“It’s been a great result for the whole team. We have been so unlucky since Malaysia. We had the pace but for some reason or another we don’t manage to get the result in the end. I think it’s great to come back into the points with another podium.”

Perez expects to be a player for the rest of the season: “The thing is we long to fight for a podium every race. Today was a very crazy race, as we have had many of this year. But I think we have the potential to do it. This has to be the target, to get the first win this season for our team.”