WATCH: The brilliant save that stopped Perez hitting the wall during the Hungarian GP
Sergio Perez brought his RP20 home in seventh place in Sunday’s Hungarian Grand Prix, but such is Racing Point’s speed this season, the Mexican was left to rue two incidents that he felt cost him a chance of a bigger points haul.
After qualifying fourth on Saturday despite suffering from dizziness and neck pain during the session – which he said had cleared up on Sunday – Perez dropped down the field as soon as the race got underway.
“It was a shame about my start,” he said. “I just picked up a lot of wheelspin in the first phase and that cost us a lot of positions. So a very poor start, [and it was] very hard to recover afterwards.”
ANALYSIS: Does Perez’s future lie with Alfa Romeo amid Vettel links to Racing Point?
Perez’s race was very nearly over completely soon afterwards when he switched to dry tyres and lost grip on the damp surface – with only a superbly skilful save preventing him from crashing into the barriers, as you can see in the video above.
“I had a few adventures out there too,” he said. “On the dry [tyres] I went off and I nearly put it in the wall. Luckily I managed to survive but I lost two places.”
From there, Perez fought his way back up the order to finish seventh, immediately behind Sebastian Vettel’s Ferrari.
“It’s always tricky to recover at the Hungaroring, but we tried our best and I had some good battles. When I did get some clean air, I could show the pace of the car, but the time I lost on Lap 1 was costly.
“The main thing is that we’ve scored more points for the team and are now just behind third place in the constructors’ championship,” he added, on a day when his team mate Lance Stroll finished just off the podium in fourth.
READ MORE: Strategy gamble lost Racing Point chance of podium, says Stroll
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