As Perez in his second stint caught up to Verstappen, who was still driving a one-stop pace, so he was becoming vulnerable to a Leclerc undercut all over again. Ideally for Perez, Verstappen would have moved aside, allowed Perez on his way in order to build up the necessary gap over the slower Ferrari. The hazard of that for Red Bull was that it may have allowed Perez to have also beaten Verstappen – by way of strategy. Because there was no calling whether this was ideally a one-stop race or a two. Particularly after the events of Brazil, that was perhaps a prospect no-one really relished.
So no-one asked Verstappen to even consider allowing Perez past. Instead, discussions were had with Perez about converting to a one-stop, but having gone through his first set of tyres so quickly, Perez mistakenly believed it was degradation – and not simply graining – which had been the problem and so he didn’t fancy it.
“Yes, we were discussing it at some point,” he said, “but I think we thought that the deg was going to be higher than it really was. And we just didn’t push as much as we should have pushed on that second stint, and probably left two seconds on the table there.”