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Formula 1 French GP

Perez baffled by French GP penalty

Sergio Perez says he was baffled as to why he was penalised for his incident at the start of the French Grand Prix.

Pablo Elizalde Jonathan Noble

Edited: Jun 23, 2019, 3:57 PM

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Sergio Perez, Racing Point RP19

The Racing Point driver was handed a five-second penalty for going off track and gaining an advantage at the start, despite going around the outside of the Turn 3 bollard as instructed by race direction at the beginning of the weekend.

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Perez, starting from 14th on the grid, believes he had done nothing wrong, as he felt he has followed the instructions.

"I don't understand why I got the penalty," Perez told Motorsport.com. "I did what I'm supposed to do, which is to go around the bollard, and you are meant to go slower, but apparently I gained an advantage.

"I have to review to see what I did wrong, but from my point it's so hard to judge where you are on track. I ended up behind [Nico] Hulkenberg, which is where I started, where I was into Turn 1, so I just have to review that."

He added: "If you go around the bollard you are meant to lose a lot of time. It's what I did. It's a pain in the ass to have to go around the bollard, but I stuck to the rules and I still got the penalty.

"The rule is clear. If you are out for whatever reason you just have to go around the bollard. It's what I did, but... I think probably going around the bollard is not slow enough so we have to make it slower."

Perez continued with his point-less streak, now stretching to four races, after finishing in 12th position at Paul Ricard.

The Mexican believes the penalty robbed him of a "deserved" points finish.

"I think we had good form," he said. "We were close to the Renaults and Alfas. In race pace we were a lot closer today and we deserved some points. But yeah, the points were taken away from us.

"It's very promising the pace that we had in the race, so I'm pleased with that. We were a lot closer and we'll see what we can do better next week. Hopefully we get back to the points."

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