Sergio Perez was left frustrated by “unacceptable” problems with his RB19, which prevented him from challenging for the Australian Grand Prix win. The Mexican had issues during the third practice session on Saturday, continuously locking up at Turn 3 and going off track at Turn 1. He later crashed out of qualifying with the same issue, forcing him to start from the back of the grid. While Perez was reluctant to get into the specifics of what the problem was, Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko eluded to it being an issue with the engine braking system in the power unit. “It was really bad, very bad weekend. What happened on Saturday, it’s totally unacceptable,” said Perez to media, after the race. “We have to get to the bottom of it because I felt that we had a really good weekend up to yesterday [Saturday].” Perez: We lost all confidence Perez says the issues that the team experienced set their confidence back, despite having superior pace over the competition “We worked so hard preparing the Grand Prix and then that just put us back completely we lost all the confidence,” he said. “And then I think definitely we had the basic fight for the victory today, but finishing in P5 is damage limitation.” He managed to climb back up to P6 in the race and stay out of trouble during each of the stoppages, which became P5 at the end with Carlos Sainz’s time penalty. This was effectively the same level of progress as Verstappen managed in Saudi Arabia when he drove to P2 after starting from P15 on the grid.
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