"Painful day" for Perez after late pit stop ruins Imola F1 podium chances

Sergio Perez says he doesn’t understand the reasons for Racing Point's costly decision to pit him under the Safety Car at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix.

Perez was running in a net third place following Max Verstappen's retirement but stopped for fresh softs when the Safety Car was deployed.

While Racing Point opted to pit Perez, the likes of Daniel Ricciardo, Charles Leclerc and Alexander Albon stayed out on hards.

Perez lost a position to the AlphaTauri of Daniil Kvyat on the Safety Car restart and then was unable to overtake Leclerc, due to the difficulties following other cars at Imola.

Reflecting on the decision to pit under the Safety Car, Perez said: "I don't know, I think, looking at it, it didn't make sense at the time, you know, the call was very late, but it's always easy to take the right decision after the race.

"Overtaking today was extremely difficult. I haven't spoken to the team yet. They must have some reasons on it. Just a painful, painful day, because we had a podium in the pocket. It is just hard to digest. I think they are as disappointed as I am right now. We are a team and we lose and also win together. In hindsight, it was the wrong call today."

Despite missing out on his first podium since 2018, Perez says there were still plenty of positives to take.

"From all the negative we can take a lot of positives," Perez added. "That first stint was tremendous, great strategy, great calls from the team. We put ourselves in a position to get on that podium. But yeah, it is a painful day, you know. Also a painful day in the championship, our competition - we basically gave the podium to Ricciardo."