Scuderia Ferrari Monegasque driver Charles Leclerc has expressed his agreement with Sergio Perez’s perspective on their first-lap crash in the Mexico City Grand Prix, which took place at the 4.304-kilometre Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez in Mexico City on Sunday, characterizing it as a racing event.
Charles Leclerc, who started from pole position, had a sluggish start, enabling Max Verstappen to overtake him on the inside and secure the advantageous inside line for the 811-meter sprint to Turn 1. In the meantime, Sergio Perez capitalized on the slipstream from both cars and went three-wide into the braking zone.
The Red Bull with the number 11 attempted an ambitious outside pass on the Ferrari SF-23 car, similar to Max Verstappen’s approach in 2021, but it didn’t work, resulting in Charles Leclerc getting squeezed with no room to move further to the right, as that’s where the Dutchman was positioned.
This incident caused the Red Bull RB19 single-seater to become airborne, leading to significant floor and sidepod damage, prompting the Austriam team to retire the car. It also dashed Sergio Perez’s hopes of securing second place in the championship, with three races left until the end of the 2023 Formula 1 season. In the post-race interviews, Sergio Perez stood his ground, emphasizing that he had to make the move and that it was merely a racing incident, while Charles Leclerc concurred with this assessment.
“I think exactly the same, I mean I had nowhere to go,” the Ferrari man explained at the end of the Mexico City Grand Prix when asked by the journalists about the incident with Sergio Perez, who described the moment at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez as a simple racing incident.
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“I tried to stay on the right as much as possible, as close as I could to Max. But unfortunately, there was no space anymore for me to be any more to the right. I don’t think Checo was aware that I had Max on my right and started to turn in, and when I saw that, I knew that we would collide at one point, which we did. After that, I was extremely surprised that I could finish the race. When I saw Checo with his rear wheel touching my front wheel, I was like: ‘Okay, that’s done for me.’ Then I did two, three corners and it didn’t feel too bad. Obviously, all was not great but it was not too bad and I could finish the race. On the radio, they told me that we were lacking, I think, 10 or 15 points [of downforce], but to be honest, I managed to drive around it and it didn’t feel too bad, so that was positive.” – Scuderia Ferrari Monegasque driver Charles Leclerc concluded.
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