Sergio Perez adamant the crash with Alex Albon was a racing incident despite getting penalized

Sergio Perez had a weekend to forget at the Singapore GP. The Mexican driver was far off the front of the field with Red Bull struggling for pace. Checo made contact with Alex Albon in the latter half of the race which led to the Williams driver failing to score points. However, despite receiving a five-second time penalty, Perez claimed that it was a racing incident.

The Red Bull driver insisted that he was not at fault for the collision. The incident cost Albon a potential points finish while Perez managed to negate the effect of the penalty with a gap big enough to the next car behind him by the end of the race. The 33-year-old believed that it was simply a racing incident. He said, as reported by Racingnews365, “With the Alex incident, there was nothing there. It was just a racing incident.”

The Mexican driver claimed that Alex Albon had overtaken him during the Safety Car. Sergio Perez slammed race control for a system that is incapable of recognizing such situations as the Williams driver managed to retain his position on the Safety Car restart. Perez stated, “With the Safety Car, I was ahead of him and Alex overtook me. But the system is not good enough so they couldn’t tell at the time that I was ahead.”

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Shocking weekend for Sergio Perez and Red Bull in Singapore

Red Bull Racing headed into the weekend with a 15-race-long winning streak. Moreover, Max Verstappen was aiming to win his eleventh consecutive race this year. However, the weekend was nothing short of a disaster for Milton Keynes. Verstappen and Perez even failed to make it to the Top 10 in Qualifying after being knocked out by Red Bull’s own junior driver Liam Lawson in the AlphaTauri.

The race was not any better for Red Bull. Verstappen and Perez tried an alternate strategy to gain on the competition. However, an ill-timed Safety Car managed to put the Austrian team on the back foot. As such, Sergio Perez could only manage eighth place with his world-champion teammate salvaging a Top 5 finish at the Marina Bay Circuit.

However, the Milton Keynes-based team reckons that such a weekend will be a one-off as the RB-19 is expected to be back at the front of the pack in the following race at Suzuka. Although, it remains to be seen if Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez can bounce back at the Japanese GP.

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