25/07/2022
NEWS STORY
Sergio Perez claims that incorrect information from the FIA over the withdrawal of the virtual safety car led to him losing out to George Russell in today's French Grand Prix.
Inheriting third when Charles Leclerc crashed out on lap 17, Sergio Perez spent the next ten laps fending off George Russell, before a charging Carlos Sainz passed the Mercedes to mount his own attack.
When Sainz made his shock pit stop, moments after passing the Red Bull, Perez once again found himself under attack from Russell.
The Briton eventually made a move at the chicane, and as the pair touched the Red Bull driver went off, cutting the chicane in the process.
While Russell insisted that the Mexican hand back the position, the stewards saw it differently and opted to take no action.
Then came the VSC that followed Guanyu Zhou's retirement, and when it was withdrawn just a couple of laps later Perez appeared to be caught on the hop.
Russell slowed right down, then suddenly raced forward, passing the Red Bull and leaving Perez for dead.
"It's a shame that the virtual safety car interfered with the result, to be honest," said Perez at race end. "It shouldn't be the case, but it was today the case. It was really unfortunate what happened.
"I got the message that the VSC was going to end out of turn nine, so I went for it," he explained. "But it didn't end, and I had the message saying that it's going to end all the way through turn 12. I was just too close to it.
"It was totally wrong with the system, there was something going on," he insisted. "It said it was going to end out of turn 9 and it only ended out of turn 13.
"It seems like George had different information and he was able to prepare better for it."
"Checo struggled a little more this weekend with degradation than we've seen previously," said Christian Horner. "What was frustrating for him is there was an issue in race control with the safety car, the VSC, because they couldn't turn it off, so they had to do a reset.
"He said he wasn't getting the delta in his car, so he was bang on his delta," he added. "George either pre-empted it, but was within the delta, or maybe the information to the two cars was different. We have to go and explore that.
"It was frustrating, because I think he would have had the pace to hold him off for a double podium."
Once the reason behind the deployment of the VSC has been resolved, usually meaning the track has been cleared, the teams are messaged by race control to advise that the VSC period is ending, the race is then supposed to go green at "any time between 10 and 15 seconds later", at which point the drivers are allowed to resume racing. However, in this particular case the message was delayed by almost a minute.
In a statement issued after the race, the FIA said: "A second VSC ending message was sent due to a hardware issue, which led to an automated switch to backup systems that worked exactly as they should in that scenario.
"The same information is supplied to all teams concurrently. The VSC ending countdown time to the green light being displayed on the trackside panels is always random."
Check out our Sunday gallery from Le Castellet here.