Mexico’s Sergio Checo Perez continues to be talked about for his performance in the eventful Australian Grand Prix (GP) – in which he stood out by sneaking into the top 5 of the final standings after starting from the back of the grid.
His distinguishable fifteen-place comeback (and defense of second place in the Drivers’ Championship) was enough for the tire brand Pirelli to open the conversation for an eventual renaming of his nickname “Minister of Defense.”
Thus, through its Twitter account, the company pointed out that the Jalisco native’s role in the Oceanic Continent GP would be enough to stop flaunting the defense and give way to being the “Mexican Minister of Attack.”
“A red flag threw a monkey wrench into his Australian GP strategy, but Checo Perez made up for it,” the company wrote, accompanied by a radiology of the Red Bull driver’s performance.
While the Mexican has not commented on the matter, fans of the Mexican accepted the praise. They thanked Pirelli for “doing justice” to the World Champion Max Verstappen’s teammate.
“That’s it!”, “Hurts whoever it has to hurt!”, “Red Bull still doesn’t give the possibility to let him develop his full potential, for fuck’s sake,” and “Today he’s stronger mediatically than the champion. Today the attack minister sells more,” fans wrote in response to the publication.
The outstanding performance of Checo Perez in Australia
The Australian GP transcended the inconveniences presented from start to finish of the contest: a couple of red flags, Safety Cars, inconveniences in the single-seaters, and some accidents added nervousness and stress to the third stage of Formula 1 (F1) 2023.
The first starts of Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) and George Russell (Mercedes Benz) favored Checo Perez, who by then had already climbed up to 13th place to sneak into the points zone, which he managed to enter on lap 23/58 after passing Yuki Tsunoda (Alpha Tauri), Oscar Piastri (McLaren) and Nico Hülkenberg (Haas) without any problem.
And although the Mexican’s performance helped him to move up to seventh place by lap 43/58, a Safety Car and a red flag made a 180-degree turn with only four laps remaining in the race, i.e., 54/58.
Both factors contributed to the Alpine duo (Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon), Nick de Vries (Alpha Tauri), and Logan Sargeant (Williams) exiting the race after being involved in a series of accidents, of which Perez was slightly affected after a drift into the gravel dropped him to 11th place.
The chaos merited a third red flag that caused uncertainty for the remaining drivers, as they would only have one lap to recover.
However, the International Automobile Federation(FIA) organizers decreed that the restart would be carried out on the move and in the order in which the cars had been running before the multiple collision.
Thus, Checo Perez restarted and finished the race in sixth place on the grid. But a five-second penalty given to Ferrari’s Spaniard, Carlos Sainz, moved the Mexican up to fifth in the Australian GP.
And although this did not help him to get onto the podium in Melbourne, it did mean 10 more points for the Drivers’ World Championship, allowing him to stay in the runner-up position over Fernando Alonso. In addition, he closed the day with the title of “Best Driver of the Day” and the fastest lap record (which earned him one more point).