Sergio Perez didn’t cover himself in all that much glory in Melbourne.
He churned up the gravel several times in Saturday’s practice session and then proceeded to crash out on his very first lap in qualifying.
“A day to forget”, he would later quip, though he explained that the repeated mistakes were due to a “technical issue” that he was trying to get to the bottom of.
All in all, it meant he started the Australian Grand Prix from plumb last.
During the race, Perez made his way through the field and did deliver several scintillating overtakes into Melbourne’s high-speed turn 9 and 10 chicane.
But he nearly blew all of his progress late on.
In the chaotic final restart, he ran across the grass at turn 1 and fell down to 10th.
Luckily, this mistake was effectively wiped away in the final results, which did not take into account the messy restart. That allowed Perez to finish 5th.
While 5th isn’t too bad considering Perez started from the back and Australia isn’t the easiest place to overtake, the result has still struck a blow to his championship hopes.
This weekend, Perez was trying to prove himself as a credible threat to the current points leader, Max Verstappen.
After winning last fortnight’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, Perez was freshly enthused and confident he was a genuine contender for the 2023 world championship.
After all, he had impressively held off Verstappen for much of that Saudi race - and the win meant Perez was just a point adrift in the championship.
Perez told Sky Sports F1 that to win the championship, he’d need to “beat Max weekend in, weekend out and keep this level of consistency throughout the season”.
But that’s exactly what he failed to do when he arrived down under.
There wasn’t a moment during the entire Australian Grand Prix weekend where Perez looked ready to take the fight to Verstappen.
In fact, Verstappen beat Perez in all five official sessions.
And with Verstappen coming home to win Sunday’s race, he extended his championship lead over Perez to 15 points.
Interestingly, Perez didn’t really seem too phased post-race in Australia.
“Generally, it was a good result today,” he said. “I’m happy we finished [5th] and even managed to secure the fastest lap.”
Thank you for reading! F1 sadly won’t be back for a whopping four weeks. The reason for the delay is that F1 had initially planned to race in China in two weeks’ time, but that race was cancelled and not replaced.
The next race on the calendar is the Azerbaijan Grand Prix on April 30.