Mercedes lost to Red Bull late in Paul Ricard when Verstappen overtook Lewis Hamilton on the penultimate lap and an aggressive two-stop strategy led to success.
After Verstappen pitted for the second time on lap 32 and switched to two-stop mode, Mercedes opted for a one-stop strategy with both Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas.
Hamilton and Bottas were sporadically heard on the radio talking about a possible second stop, but Perez’s threat in the second Red Bull made Mercedes think twice about it.
“The battle between the three cars was intense at the front, and I think you basically had to choose the one-stop or the two-stop,” said Mercedes team boss Wolff after the race. “The two-stop was a threat for us because Perez was in the way. We made a mistake today.
“If Perez hadn’t been standing in the window, we would have at least made a second stop with one car and then basically put the other Red Bull car in a difficult situation.”
Perez fought his way through in fourth place at the beginning of the race due to the windy conditions, but was able to stabilize the gap to Bottas in front and only increase it by 0.2 seconds between lap 6 and lap 16.
Perez was then able to extend his stint on the media and stayed seven laps longer than Bottas. 19 seconds before Verstappen he drove out of the pits as the leader, but thanks to his fresher hard tires he was able to catch up with the Mercedes drivers with half a second per lap.
It prepared Perez for a late pass to Bottas for third place and for the first time in his F1 career took the Mexican podiums in a row. At the checkered flag he was just 8.8 seconds behind Verstappen and less than six seconds behind Hamilton in P2.
Sergio Perez, Red Bull Racing RB16B, Kimi Raikkonen, Alfa Romeo Racing C41
Photo by: Drew Gibson / Motorsport Images
“It took a few laps for that to calm down for him, and I think when he did that he was able to drive at top speed and actually catch up with Bottas,” explained Red Bull team principal Christian Horner.
“So it turned out to be a better strategy for him. A few more laps, or if he’d cleared Valtteri a lap or two earlier, I think he would have hit Lewis on the last lap.”
Wolff said Mercedes knew Perez was “always out of the window” to complicate a possible two-stop strategy, which meant Hamilton or Bottas would have to sort him out on the track – unlike Verstappen, who started his his team-mate was waved past his third stint.
“He wasn’t far away,” said Wolff of Perez. “He wasn’t in the race for the podium in the beginning, of course, but they drove for a long time and that turned out to be the right strategy to get back on the podium.”
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Perez managed to overtake Bottas with four laps left in the race, which opened the door for Mercedes to take the Finn for a range of softs and set the fastest lap for the extra bonus point.
But Mercedes didn’t make a second stop and directed Bottas to try to stay within five seconds of Perez, who the team believed could receive a penalty for making the pass for the third way off track. The stewards finally decided that Perez had gained no advantage in moving to third place, while Bottas was 5.8 seconds behind.
“We thought that Perez might get a penalty if he was overtaken outside the lane, so we said stay within five seconds,” said Wolff. “It was really a balance between this penalty and the fastest lap. We gambled, we lost.”
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