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Sergio Perez joked that clipping the wall during the Azerbaijan GP on Sunday helped him go quicker. The Mexican was in an intense battle with teammate Max Verstappen as the gap between the two ebbed and flowed throughout the race in Baku.
While battling each other, they clipped the wall multiple times. On one such instance, Perez strangely did a purple sector after hitting the wall. He joked in the press conference that doing so helped him, as he was struggling with the front end:
"It actually helped me. I was struggling with the front end, so somehow I picked up a bit of front end. So something to see, but no, in all honesty, I was quite concerned, because the paranoia starts and you start to look at the tyre, and I was looking at the tyre and my engineer asked me what happened on 15.
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"I’m like, ‘wait, I'm just looking that everything is OK with the tyre’, so yeah, it was one of those moments where you drop a bit of concentration, and in this place you cannot really; it doesn't matter where you are in the race; you cannot lose your concentration at all."
Sergio Perez cautious of not having another Melbourne-like weekend
Sergio Perez was happy to eat into Max Verstappen's lead atop the championship but knows that he has a long season ahead. Cautious about not having another weekend like the one he had in Australia, 'Checo' said:
"Well, I think it's a long year ahead, you know. I really believe that we are in the fight. I think without the problems we had in the qualifying in Melbourne, we should be a lot closer.
"So, it's important not to have those problems ever again and to minimise the problems because I think at the end of the day, it's just very important to make sure that whenever we cannot win, finish second, and it's still a good day still."
Sergio Perez is now only six points behind Max Verstappen (93) in the drivers' championship after four races. The Mexican has won two races and a sprint, while his teammate has two race wins.
