Sergio Perez is having a reasonably good season so far, bagging a podium in Australia. But more than Checo’s podium, the thrilling neck-and-neck battle between him and Lewis Hamilton was the highlight of the Melbourne race. Even the Red Bull driver himself enjoyed going up against the Silver Arrows ace.

Checo started the race at P3, but Lewis Hamilton surprised the Mexican driver as soon as the race started. Hamilton overtook Perez from inside at the curve 3 of the Albert Park Circuit; the Mercedes driver was chasing Charles Leclerc and Max Verstappen for a while. But the Mexican again attacked the seven-time world champion.

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But both the drivers again got into a neck-and-neck battle after a safety car session. And Hamilton again took away Perez’s position, but Checo pulled off a risky overtaking maneuver in the left-right chicane of the circuit. Later, Perez shared his reason for pulling such a risky move on Hamilton. Sergio revealed, “It’s always nice to battle with Hamilton because, how hard it may be, the fight is always correct.”

Sergio Perez on new tracks lacking character

The Red Bull driver recently shared his excitement about driving on new circuits, but he also doesn’t want historic circuits to leave the F1 schedule. Perez shares that many new tracks don’t have a similar “character” as the historic tracks.

Checo shared, “So it’s fantastic. But at the same time, it would be good to keep the history within the sport, and we need those historic tracks to always be with us. And we have to make sure when we go to new venues, to really have some character on the tracks. I felt like some of the new tracks kind of lack a bit of character. So that will be very important.”

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But at the moment, Perez needs to think about the Imola circuit, where he is going to race next week. Do you think Checo can bag another podium there? Well, only time will tell.