Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko questioned Sergio Perez’s penalty at the Canadian GP for driving in a dangerous situation with major damage to the rear wing. He also cited Lewis Hamilton’s example from the 2020 British GP when he finished the race on three wheels.

Perez suffered damage on the 53rd lap of the 2024 F1 Canadian Grand Prix as he spun in turn 6 and hit the wall, bringing down his rear wing with major damage. While the next procedure should have been to retire the car and get it off the track (after triggering a safety car perhaps), the 34-year-old driver kept driving and retired the car in the pits. The stewards noted him for dangerous driving and penalized him after the race.

Red Bull Racing was penalized €25,000, while Sergio Perez will be starting the next race with a three-place grid penalty.

Reacting to this, Helmut Marko stated that they could “get over” the grid penalty. Moreover, he defended the team by claiming that they were not able to assess the damage at first. He told OE24:

“We’re not discussing it anymore, we can get over the three places drop. At the time we didn’t know how bad the damage was. We couldn’t see it with the camera settings we had available. We wanted Checo to keep driving because anything was possible in this race. And you never know how much debris will fly away.”

Marko then cited Lewis Hamilton’s victory in the 2020 British GP, where multiple drivers suffered from a damaged front-left tire but the FIA did not take any action on that. Hamilton too suffered a puncture on the last lap but was able to beat Max Verstappen with a little over three seconds.

“Others have driven around with more dangling parts. Lewis Hamilton once won at Silverstone on three wheels.”

Red Bull “advised” Sergio Perez to bring back car to the pits to avoid a safety car

Perez suffered from the crash with just 17 laps to go in the race. At this point, Max Verstappen was leading with Lando Norris trailing him just 5 seconds away. Since McLaren was seemingly the fastest car throughout the weekend, a safety car could have been a close call for Red Bull and Verstappen might have lost yet another race this season.

The statement released by the FIA reveals that Red Bull “advised” Sergio Perez to bring the car back to the pits to avoid a safety car.

“The team confirmed in the hearing that the driver had been advised to bring the car back to the pits as they were trying to avoid a Safety Car situation.”

This fine could be yet another shot on Red Bull’s budget as well as the damage incurred on the #11 car. This is the second consecutive DNF Sergio Perez has suffered after a major crash in the Monaco GP earlier.