In his 299th F1 start, Sergio Pérez had a very quiet race at the 2026 United States GP, crossing the line in P19. He was the last of the classified runners on Sunday.
Thanks to grid penalties for Lindblad, Colapinto and Bortoleto, he went off from P17 on the grid. They all passed him, along with Lance Stroll who started from the pit lane.
Cadillac split the strategies: The Mexican went for the S-H one, while Bottas did the alternate H-S option. Before the Finn’s car broke down, it was set to be a close finish between the pair as Pérez was only a few seconds up the road.
Sergio Pérez on strategy and blue flags in 2026 F1 United States GP
Speaking in the print media pen post-race, the six-time race winner explained he had to do plenty of management with the tyre strategy he was on.
As well as that, he explained how costly the timing of his stop was. He boxed on Lap 23, coming out amongst the lead runners. That lost him quite a few seconds in his battle against his teammate.
“Yeah, it was a bit tricky.
“The degradation was a little bit lower for us than we thought, so we went for a soft-hard [strategy], but then it just felt like quite a bit of management that we had to do.
“And unfortunately I think with the timing of the blue flags we lost a lot of race time with it, because as we pitted we basically went straight into the blue flags.”
Taking a positive from Austin
With Williams struggling massively thanks to a lack of downforce at a circuit that exposes its weaknesses in full, Sergio Pérez was encouraged by how close Cadillac were to them at the 2026 F1 United States GP. At the end, he was 20s behind Carlos Sainz.
“It wasn’t as straightforward as we would have liked. Yeah, a bit unfortunate in that regard. But yeah, look, we nearly finished the race with both cars.
“Valtteri had a much better race as well, so I think all in all we were closer to the cars ahead. With the Williams, I think we just lost a lot of seconds with the blue flags and the timing of them. We could have been a little bit closer to Williams.”
A special milestone at his home race but expecting a tough outing
On Wednesday, it was confirmed that Sergio Pérez had agreed a new multi-year deal with Cadillac to stay at the team until the end of 2029. It is the perfect week to do it ahead of his home race. The 2026 Mexico City GP is also due to be his 300th race start in F1.
Nonetheless, as it is the team’s first year in the sport and because of the pace they have shown this season, Sergio Pérez is fully aware of how tough his home race will be this time around.
“Yeah, obviously just to have a good time, celebrate with them the 300 race and hopefully we can put on a good show, hopefully we can be a little bit more competitive with the altitude, etc. We’ll see.
“But overall, I think it’s going to be a painful one as well. There are some races where we seem to be a little bit closer than others, but we will keep pushing.”
