Perez “hurt” by safety car timing in Saudi Arabian GP victory fight

The Red Bull driver led the opening 14 laps of the Saudi Arabian GP but saw his race wrecked by a safety car period just one lap after his pitstop, when Nicholas Latifi crashed at the final corner.

The safety car period allowed his frontrunning rivals a cheap pitstop, initially pushing Perez back to third, before the Mexican was instructed to allow Carlos Sainz Jr to pass him at the safety car restart having been judged to have passed the Ferrari driver when he exited the pitlane.

With Perez relegated to fourth place, he was unable to charge back up the order and missed out on the podium having been certain a fight for the win had been on.

"This is just racing especially when we knew that we could be in that situation,” Perez told Sky Sports F1 about the safety car period.

“We had the undercut and the margin that we were looking for, we got it, and things were looking really good but unfortunately Latifi put it in the wall at the wrong time for me.

Marshals remove the damaged car of Nicholas Latifi, Williams FW44, from the circuit

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

“This is racing. It will come around for us one day but it hurts because we did everything we possibly could do win this race from pole.”

Perez said he had no issue with conceding a place to Sainz at the safety car restart but also lamented his luck in the closing stages when yellow flags denied him a late attack on Sainz.

“I was told to give the place back, so I gave it back. I felt that was fair enough,” Perez said, who is under investigation for failing to slow under the yellow flags along with Sainz and Kevin Magnussen in the closing stages.

“After the virtual safety car I think I picked up a bit of speed, I came close, but then there was the yellow