"It wouldn't have changed anything": Sergio Perez explains team radio call during 2023 F1 Saudi Arabian GP

Sergio Perez elaborated on some of his radio communications with the Red Bull pit wall during the 2023 F1 Saudi Arabian GP.

The Mexican won the race by keeping a consistent gap from his teammate Max Verstappen. However, when the team allowed both drivers to race and push despite them reporting different reliability issues with the car, he disagreed with them.

Speaking to Motorsport.com, Sergio Perez explained how his and Verstappen's lap times were quite similar and why he did not see the point in pushing the car. He said:

"Obviously they have more information than us, and I think the team did a fantastic job on letting us race. I just felt like there was a point where, for the last 10 laps or so, that we had very similar pace within a tenth, faster or slower. And I just felt like the gap [if both continued to push] would have been probably a little bit less or a little bit more, but it wouldn't have changed anything."

Later on, Sergio Perez stated how he was fully focused on bringing the car to the chequered flag and avoiding any reliability problems from escalating. He shared how Verstappen's driveshaft issue during the qualifying session was on his mind during the race. Hence, he did not want to take any risks. Checo concluded:

"I was just thinking about the car; I was having some strange vibrations and obviously what happened to Max [in qualifying] was on the back of my mind today. I'm sure it was on the back of the mind of the team as well. So it was just a matter of making sure both cars finished to get maximum points."

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Sergio Perez is concerned about RB19's reliability issues

After the 2023 F1 Saudi Arabian GP, Sergio Perez spoke about reliability issues with RB19 and how it could hinder Red Bull's dominance. Max Verstappen suffered a driveshaft failure in the qualifying session, while Perez himself felt that his brake pedal was going 'long' during the race.

When Sportskeeda asked Checo about the issues, he said:

“Well, reliability is where it is. We saw it today with Aston Martin. It's going to hit us at some point but obviously we need to keep working on that, we need to have the issue races whenever we can. We were in a lucky position in Bahrain but otherwise if we had to push to the end, we probably wouldn't make the race so there are a lot of reliability concerns at the moment but hopefully they don't hit us anytime soon.”

So far, Red Bull are comfortably ahead of every other team on the F1 grid. The Austrian team will hope to iron out their potential reliability issues before the next race weekend in Australia (March 31-April 2) and continue their dominance on the field this season.