Gasly beats Perez after fierce fight
Pierre Gasly recorded his best result since his Italian Grand Prix victory with a charge to fifth place for Alphatauri at Portimao, during which he won a controversial late battle against Sergio Perez’s Racing Point.
After qualifying ninth, Gasly managed his soft tyres better than most through the opening stint to rise to fifth, putting passes on Alex Albon, Kimi Raikkonen, Daniel Ricciardo, Lando Norris and Carlos Sainz Jr in the opening 20 laps.
A switch to mediums dropped Gasly back into a fight with the undercutting Ricciardo, but he made a second pass on his Renault rival before bearing down on Perez in the closing stages as the Mexican’s soft tyres faded.
Gasly’s first attempt at an overtake at the inside of Turn 1 with three laps to go sparked an aggressive defensive swipe from Perez. Gasly had to back out at the last minute, narrowly avoiding a crash, and later Perez was given a reprimand by the stewards. Gasly made the pass with ease one lap later to secure fifth.
“It was a bit sketchy,”said Gasly.
“I was quite pissed off with him, so the next lap I really sent it round the outside, which was pretty good.”
Perez had run last on the opening lap after contact with Max Verstappen when trying to pass for third.“i thought I gave enough space to Max but it was very difficult that first lap,”perez said.“you could see everybody was struggling a lot. We touched really late in the corner.”
A two-stop strategy left Perez vulnerable late on, causing him to drop to seventh behind Gasly and Sainz.
“It was looking great because at that point we were already P5, but I think we lacked some information on that soft tyre,”he explained.
Perez’s Racing Point team-mate Lance Stroll was the only retirement after a disastrous race where he received two penalties: one for causing a collision with Lando Norris that dropped Stroll to last, the second for repeated tracklimits offences. He retired from the race with 15 laps to go with damage, running half a minute off 19th place.