Monisha Kaltenborn encourages Sergio Perez to end 2012 F1 season strongly – Formula 1 news
Sauber team principal, Monisha Kaltenborn, has encouraged Sergio Perez to bring out his best before the 2012 F1 season ends and he leaves the team to join McLaren for next year.
Perez has been under speculation as he has not been able to perform well ever since his confirmation with McLaren to replace their outgoing driver Lewis Hamilton. The decision had been finalised just ahead of the Japanese Grand Prix. The driver kept getting
involved in unwanted incidents after that. He suffered a gravel accident in Japan, failed to score points in Korea and got his car punctured in India. The Abu Dhabi Grand Prix this weekend found him causing a collision with Romain Grosjean of Lotus F1 who
in turn smashed into Mark Webber of Red Bull Racing. Perez had started at eleventh on the grid to finish in fifteenth place without scoring any points along with becoming the reason for Grosjean’s and Webber’s retirement from the race.
Kaltenborn has taken notice of the ongoing situation and had called Perez to have a talk with him about his constant failure to perform.
“He's very professional about finishing his career at Sauber in a very good way. I think if he can contribute to us having a fantastic position at the end of the season, it's a tribute to him as well and speaks for him when he moves onto the next team,”
she said.
The FIA did not ignore the recent incident and Perez earned a penalty for causing the collision with the two drivers.
“Some of it was definitely harsh, but we have seen that the FIA is pretty hard these days - which is right because you want to avoid these kinds of situations in the future,” Kaltenborn added.
Sauber has already replaced Perez with Force India’s Nico Hulkenberg while the future of their second driver Kamui Kobayashi remains uncertain. However, Kobayashi scored eight points in the Abu Dhabi GP as compared to Perez and Kaltenborn admitted that the
points were very valuable for the team to overtake Mercedes for the fifth position in the constructors’ title.
Tags: