Sergio Perez will have a three-place grid penalty at the next Formula One race in Spain after the Mexican drove his Red Bull in an unsafe condition at Sunday’s Canadian Grand Prix.
Champion Red Bull was also fined 25,000 euros (USD 26,935).
Perez retired in the pits after driving around the track with a broken rear wing, shedding carbon fibre debris, on his car following a crash into the barriers at turn six.
Article 26.10 of the sporting regulations says that “if a driver has serious mechanical difficulties, he must leave the track as soon as it is safe to do so.”
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Stewards said in a statement that Red Bull had confirmed at the hearing that Perez had been advised to bring the car back to the pits to avoid a potential safety car situation if he stopped on track.
The stewards said a sporting penalty was needed in addition to the financial one due to the safety implications.
Perez has retired from his last two races while triple world champion team mate Max Verstappen, Sunday’s race winner, has six victories from nine so far.
“I’m very sorry for my team, I let them down today. But we will come back no doubt. There’s a very long way to go,” Perez, who has scored only four points from the last three races, said on social media.
“The incident was on me, I touched the wet part into turn six and I couldn’t stop the car, I couldn’t touch the brakes,” Perez said on Sunday.
“It has been a very tough couple of weekends, we will regroup, keep our heads down and learn from the weekend. We identified a couple of issues after qualifying and they meant we would have qualified a lot higher.
“Hopefully we can be back to our form in Spain and get back to the level we were at earlier in the season. I am confident in that, there are good tracks coming for us.”
Team boss Christian Horner told Sky Sports television that Perez, whose contract was recently extended, had a “horrible weekend” and would need to raise his game.
“He’ll need to come back strong in Barcelona. Thankfully Ferrari had a shocker today so didn’t get any points, that let us off the hook somewhat,” he added.
“But we need both cars scoring. We got away with it today but we need Checo (Perez) back up there where he was at the beginning of the year from Barcelona onwards.”
Barcelona hosts the Spanish Grand Prix on June 23.
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