F1 News

Bad news for Perez thanks to Stroll's crash in Mugello

24 September 2020 at 12:08
Last update 24 September 2020 at 14:46
  • GPblog.com

Lance Stroll went off pretty badly in Mugello after he got a blowout and his car caught fire during the clean up. The Racing Point is more or less depreciated and so the Canadian gets a new car for this weekend. However, this also affects Sergio Perez, in terms of updates.

Enough for a car

The plan was to equip both cars with the latest technical gadgets, but that plan could go into the trash after Stroll's crash. All the new parts that were available were lost as a result, and as a result the team had to start over from scratch. In that sense, the week of rest came at the right time, as they bring new updates to Sochi, just not in the right quantities.

They have had enough time to produce these parts for a car and the one who has the most points in the championship is the priority. That's Lance Stroll in this case, so Sergio Perez will be driving with older material. The goal of Racing Point is to have both cars up to date by the time they race at the Nürburgring, writes Autosport.com.

A difference of a few tenths

The improvements Stroll had in Mugello were meant to be a few tenths faster and although the car was written off in Italy, the team did find that the updates worked. Although they don't have the exact lap time differences, they did notice that Stroll's car was faster.

"However our upgrade was meant to be a couple or three tenths, and that is exactly what the performance difference was," says team boss Otmar Szafnauer. However, because of the crash in Mugello, they will have to start again and Sergio Perez is at the back of the queue.