'Phenomenal' Perez skips out of Verstappen's shadow: Singapore GP analysis

F1

After months of trailing team-mate Max Verstappen alarmingly, Sergio Perez surged back in Singapore for a much-needed, confidence-boosting win, writes Mark Hughes

Sergio Perez celebrates 2022 Singapore GP win

It was only hours after the podium celebration that Perez's win was confirmed

Grand Prix Photo

Mark Hughes

Sergio Perez has been having a tough time of it of late. After his great early-season, his pace deficit to team-mate Max Verstappen had ballooned alarmingly as the car’s development direction took it away from stable understeer into something more responsive that Verstappen could really exploit. But what is responsive to Verstappen feels unstable to Perez. Since Austria in July his qualifying deficit to Verstappen has been roughly twice as big as Daniel Ricciardo’s to Lando Norris at McLaren. But Singapore is a street track and Checo always shines around those. Furthermore, it was a street track at which Red Bull’s fuelling error in qualifying cost Verstappen pole on a drying track and dropped him to eighth.

None of Charles Leclerc, Perez, Lewis Hamilton or Carlos Sainz – the top four on the grid – had delivered perfect laps. But Perez was in the mix, starting from the front row and at a track where the overtaking difficulty suggested Verstappen had little chance of the win. It was all on Perez’s shoulders – and Leclerc was on his back. That was a heavy load around a treacherously wet Singapore.

The Red Bull took a little longer to fire up the rubber than the Ferrari but for the fifth consecutive race, the Ferrari had some difficulty maintaining good tyre performance. It has not responded well to the tech directives concerning plank mounting. Overheating fronts tended to limit Leclerc’s pace the longer a stint went on. The cooling effect of two safety cars and three VSCs would give Leclerc the chance of renewed attacks on the Red Bull, but Perez was up to the task every time.

Sergio Perez leads Charles Leclerc in the 2022 Singapore Grand Prix

Perez soaked up the pressure each time Leclerc pressed him

Red Bull

“I thought he was phenomenal today,” said Christian Horner. “He converted the start and then that first stint with the inters was really tricky. Not trying to take too much out of them, able to eke out a gap. Then control the virtual safety car, then the safety car, doing it all again. Then as we progressed towards the actual pitstop, he pulled out a decent lap so he could afford to pit quite comfortably the lap after Charles. I think we got timing of that right and then the safety car came out, concertinaed it all together. And as the lead car, you’re the reference; it’s always harder in that situation. Then the job he did on the slick tyres, keeping his cool, some big moments for him and Charles was giving it everything. As soon as Charles made one mistake and dropped out of the DRS range, that gave Checo the ability to find his rhythm and extend the lead. Phenomenal job.”

The pair ran away and hid from everyone else, with Sainz in third struggling badly for pace particularly in the initial inters phase which comprised more than half of the race. Verstappen meanwhile had an incident-filled run. In between the mishaps he was quick enough to suggest he’d have likely dominated had he started from the front. But seventh was all the evening had to offer him ultimately. He’d been challenging the fourth-placed McLaren of Lando Norris until the latter suckered him into a move on the damp off line, sending him up the escape road with flat-spotted tyres.

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“It’s crazy how long it takes here to dry,” said Sainz. “We keep doing laps, and you keep looking at the track and the dry line never appears in some places, and it keeps sliding a lot.”

“It’s difficult to spot the dry line on this circuit,” said Fernando Alonso who retired his Alpine from just behind Norris with PU failure. “I don’t know if it is the night running or just the asphalt, the new asphalt, the dark one, but it’s very difficult to spot the dry line.”

“Half the track was on the dry side but the other half was good for inters,” said Perez, “at the time we were on the slick. So not to make a mistake, and control Charles, who was really strong in the early phases, was tough.

“People, when they’re looking at you, underestimate how hard it is, and how easy it is for us to make a mistake. We basically were going to few places where it was properly damp, properly wet and it was super, super tricky, not to make a mistake.”

Into this challenge mix a sometimes-reluctant engine as it took occasional exception to the humidity of the place and the stress for Perez of delivering the much-needed result can be imagined.

Leclerc didn’t feel he or the team had done anything wrong. It had all been decided at the start, when the Ferrari caught a damper patch than the Red Bull. After that all he could do was pile on the pressure until the front tyres got too hot. “As I’ve said before this weekend, I want to use these last few races for us to get better on the execution of the race, especially,” he said, “and I feel like it’s a step forward this weekend. We need to do other steps forward. But it’s a good step in the right direction.”

Ferrari of Charles Leclerc in the 2022 Singapore Grand Prix

After repeated Ferrari mishaps, Leclerc was pleased with its Singapore race delivery

Ferrari

Perez was able to use the Red Bull’s better tyre usage to pull out over 5sec on Leclerc near the end, as a precaution against a possible penalty for allowing the safety car to get too far ahead on the two restarts. A 5sec penalty was duly applied, insufficient to change the order thanks to Checo’s late charge and Leclerc’s fading front rubber.

Sainz’s third was a much better result than a performance. “I lost quite a bit the front and I was having a lot of moments, a lot of front locks, and every moment here costs you confidence and costs you the ability to recover that pace. At one point I had to settle a bit and recover that confidence because I couldn’t keep up and once the confidence recovered in the slick and towards the last 10-15 laps I managed to be quick. But it was just way too late.”

Norris was pushing him for a time, which for a McLaren was terrific. Team-mate Daniel Ricciardo’s fifth place owed much to McLaren keeping him out long enough to benefit from a very time-cheap stop under a safety car which leapfrogged him past many of those he’d otherwise have finished behind. Hamilton spent most of the first stint stuck behind Sainz, locked up and nosed into the barrier while trying to pass, dovetailed his change to slicks with a new front wing, caught the sixth/seventh place Aston Martins but couldn’t pass, was caught in turn by the recovering Verstappen, went wide trying for a pass on Sebastian Vettel, losing him a place to the Red Bull driver, who then passed Vettel too.

But amid the sparks and the spray it wasn’t about Verstappen or Hamilton for once. It was about a driver bouncing back from a confidence crisis.

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