Sergio Perez has contradicted himself about his Sao Paulo race weekend in Brazil, and recently revealed it was one of the “strongest weekends” in terms of pace, despite a “disastrous” race on Sunday which saw him finish 11th in the Grand Prix, nine seconds from completing a minute behind team-mate Max Verstappen.

The Brazilian GP sprint looked promising for Perez, as he qualified P13 for the 24-lap event and finished in the points with an eighth place finish. In the Grand Prix he started from P12 and only made it one place in a difficult wet race. In stark contrast, Verstappen, despite starting P17 due to an engine penalty, charged through the field to win by over 19 seconds ahead of runner-up Esteban Ocon.

Perez blamed the false race start for his problems after his team failed to change tyres. Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll’s AMR24 F1 car got stuck in the gravel during the formation lap after he slid off the track, hit the wall and ended up in the gravel. The incident forced a delay and reshuffle of the grid, pushing the start of the race from 12:30 to 12:47 local time.

As the mechanics prepared for the aborted start, the drivers had to change tires. Unfortunately for Perez, Red Bull opted to keep him on cold tyres, which led to him spinning out on the opening lap. Although the team realized the mistake, it was too late to correct the situation, leaving Perez with a compromised start to the race. Speaking about his ordeal at Interlagos, Perez said media:

“It was a disaster because we didn’t know at the time that we could change the tires until the last minute – and there was no time to change them.

“We started the race with very cold tires and then, because there was no one in front of me, I went into a wall of water, so the start was a total disaster.

“We made progress, but unfortunately we sat at the red flag, and then on the restart the visibility was zero, but we made some progress.

“We got all the way up to Liam (Lawson), and we touched a bit in Turn 1, and then I went straight at Turn 4 and lost the position to Lewis (Hamilton).

“It was a total disaster and nothing really worked.”

However, reflecting on the race weekend at Interlagos, Perez changed his perspective and suggested there were several positives to take away from it. He said:

“There are some positives from the weekend, and of course Max’s win is very important for the team.

“Momentum-wise, it’s been a very strong weekend pace-wise, so there are plenty of positives from that.

“I think it was one of the strongest weekends in terms of pace. We put the car on track and straight away we were very competitive in FP1.

“It’s been a much more competitive weekend, and hopefully the momentum will come back to us.”

While the Mexican driver faced significant challenges, he may have referred to the car’s improved pace, evident in Verstappen’s performance, which had been lacking in recent Grands Prix due to a balance issue with the RB20.