Sergio Perez "Frustrated" With DRS Trains At Australian GP That Blocked His Success

From the back of the grid to a top-five finish - Sergio Perez's performance at the Australian Grand Prix was amazing. But one thing stopped him from getting further.

Sergio Perez had a fantastic outing at the Australian Grand Prix despite having a difficult time during the practice and qualifying sessions. Parking his car in the gravel during Q1 of the Saturday, we saw the Red Bull driver qualify at the back of the grid. But brilliant performance saw him climb up the grid on Sunday, resulting in a P5 finish, although after the race, he admitted his frustrations with DRS trains that stopped him from getting further.

Discussing his performance after the race, Perez was proud of his performance but lamented the DRS trains he got stuck in that blocked him from pushing further up the pack. 

“Yeah, I think it’s as much as we could do, I mean, when you’re sat in those positions. I had a really good start at the restart, the first standing start I did. I had that really good one, I jumped like, three, four places, but then it was a massive mess.

“I had to back out of it, otherwise I wouldn’t finish. When we looked where we started and how difficult it was to pass with the DRS train that we ended up [in], we managed to limit a bit the damage from yesterday.”

Digging further into the DRS issues he encountered, he described his frustration with the latter parts of the race:

“Yeah, but I was pretty frustrated later on, because I just couldn’t get close enough, and it just took me a bit too long in that DRS train.”

Looking towards the next race of the season, the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, the Mexican driver is looking forward to making up for lost performance on the Albert Park track, despite praising his team for more performance this weekend. 

“I think we managed to improve,” he said. “We changed a lot of things on the car, so hopefully that will help us a lot… I could not really get any further than I did, so let’s look forward for Baku to make sure we sort out our issues and come back strong.”