Why didn’t Max Verstappen block Charles Leclerc for Sergio Perez? “Is that fair racing?”

Max Verstappen doesn’t believe it would have been “fair” to deliberately block Charles Leclerc to aid Sergio Perez’s pursuit of P2 in the championship at the F1 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
(L to R): Max Verstappen (NLD) Red Bull Racing
(L to R): Max Verstappen (NLD) Red Bull Racing

Perez needed to beat Leclerc to finish runner-up in the F1 drivers’ 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:standings behind Verstappen.

However, Perez was unable to make his two-stop strategy wo🅠rk, fi🃏nishing just over one-second behind Leclerc on the one-stop at the chequered flag.

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Perez famously blocked 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Lewis Hamilton during the 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, with his stern defence being a big facto✱r in Verstappen ultimately winning the title.

In the post-race press conference, Verstappen was asked if there was an instruction from Red Bull to hold Leclerc up t✤o help Per🐻ez.

“No, there was not, but also that is quite a tricky call to✅ make,” Verstappen said. “You also don't want to end up… of course, you can possibly block but is that fair racing? I think not the nicest way going out of the season, like that. 

“And it looked like Checo was catching him enough to try and actually get a move but then he lost quite a bit of time with that bit of a fuss between… was it Pierre and Alex probabl♔y? You lost quite a bit of time with that, because I was watching the scree♔n.

“But yeah, unfortunate. I think, like Checo said, that second stint, because the deg was quite high on the Medium, in hindsight, probably, as a team, we could have pushed a bit more on that on that🦹 middle stint for Checo, but that's always easy to say afterwards. At the 𝓰time, we thought that we had to be a little bit careful on the tyres. 

“Again, we've had a lot of great weekends, but even in great weekends, there are ♈always things that you can learn.”

(L to R): Charles Leclerc (MON) Ferrari; Max Verstappen (NLD) Red Bull Racing; and Sergio Perez (MEX) Red Bull Racing, in
(L to R): Charles Leclerc (MON) Ferrari; Max Verstappen (NLD) Red Bull Racing; and Sergio…

Midway through the ra𒊎ce, Perez complained that he was “being held up” by Verstappen, who was running just over two seconds ahead of him.

Explaining that exchange over team radio, Perez said: “Yeah, we were discussing it at some points. But, yeah, I thiᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚnk we thought that the deg was going to be higher than it really 𒆙is. 

“And we just didn't push as much as we should have pushꦗed on that second stint, and probably will left two seconds on the table there.”

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