It took Verstappen just 14 laps to ease his way into second place. Already, Perez said, he “knew the race was looking difficult”. Verstappen was stunning in Miami from the off, consistently 0.5secs or so a lap faster than Perez. Verstappen made an error on his first lap in the final session and aborted it. Either Perez was over-cautious, or he was too hard on his tyres. When you don’t have the race pace, it is really hard to win the race.”. “This year we have started with a performance deficit, on one hand, and also an execution deficit,” he said. And said: “The last race in Baku looked an awful lot like the one in Bahrain.

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