Force India’s Sergio Perez will drop 7 places down the grid for this weeks Brazilian Grand Prix in Sao Paulo after being branded as “reckless” by the FIA after his collision on the opening lap of the United States Grand Prix with Sauber’s Adrian Sutil.
The Mexican also gets two points deducted off his super licence for his behavior.
The collision happened on the opening lap at T15 at the Circuit of Americas. Perez dived down the inside of Sutil to attempt a pass but looked like he went too deep on the brakes and could not slow down sufficiently to avoid hitting Sutil. He made slight contact with Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen in the process. But there was no damage reported by Raikkonen
A statement about the incident from the FIA read as follows: “The driver of car No.11 (Perez) could not reasonably have expected to complete the manoeuvre. His collision with car No.99 (Sutil) was reckless.”
Perez described the incident as “Unfortunate”
“What happened today is really unfortunate,” he said
“I made a move on Adrian [Sutil] at turn 15 when he left the door open, so I went up the inside. Then Adrian started to close the door and I had to try and brake later than him.
“By doing so I was unable to avoid contact with Kimi [Raikkonen], which caused me to make contact with Adrian also. I just didn’t expect Kimi to be in that position. It’s a big shame because I had a great chance to keep up my run of points finishes and I was determined to do well in such an important race. I feel very sorry for all my fans who came to support me this weekend and I’m disappointed I could not give them a race to remember.”
Adrian Sutil was left seething after the accident as he had the best starting position for the team and for himself.
“Idiot! Perez just F**king kicked me off the circuit!”he said over the radio to his team.
“It was such a shame and so disappointing and so unnecessary,” Sutil said.
“We were hoping for a great result today and because of a silly action like this we missed everything.
“It is very disappointing that we missed our biggest chance of points because of this move.”
Photo credit: Sahara Force India Formula 1
