Current Sergio Pérez

Sergio Perez Mendoza also known as 'Checo'. 21 years of age and 12 Grand Prix under his belt. Already has a contract for Sauber for next year, is part of the Ferrari driving acadamy, current favourite to replace Massa but what he didn't have was his own thread on Clip the Apex so I thought I'd sort him one out.

Won British Formula 3 at 18. Finished 12 in GP2 at 19. Finished runner-up in GP2 at 20. Made his GP debut at 21 and finished in the points only to be DQ'd later due to both Saubers breaking car regs. Had a big accident at Monoco and even chose to pull out of the Candian GP after realising he wasn't back to 100%. Has had 2 points finishes so far this season with his highest being a 7th place at Silverstone. Has been quite highly placed at both Spa and Monza in last couple of weeks but due to a tangle and a mechnical faiure didn't capitalise on it.

Has been beating his Team-mate Kobyashi reg in qualifying but has had difficulty translating that to the races. Sometimes you wonder if Perez suffers from Sauber tendency to try and make him do something different on the tyre strategy and whether he'd much rather just go for it and race with the pack. Having said that he has proved he has a head for strategy which could stand him in goodstead for the future.

Already impressed enough to get a second year with Sauber and is currently dueling with Paul Di Resta for the 'Rookie of the Year' award. What do you guys think of him? Star of the future or constant midfield runner?
 
Click to expand
An interesting look at Perez's error in autosport written by a sports psychologists Don Mcpherson. He looks at the left and right sides of the brain.The left side is good at analysing, judging, criticising and logic, its the voice in your head and Chinese Buddhists call it the "Monkey mind".But its rubbish at driving F1 cars. Drivers must drive with their right, subconcious, automatic, instinctive. The monkey is in the left. Perez was driving with his right side as he chased down Alonso, he was in the zone......

" Until another voice, a Sauber voice entered his head via the radio -and told him to be careful, suggesting he should protect second place rather than go for the win. Suddenly the monkey woke up. Perez was now thinking about his driving, and had enetered the world of 'what ifs'. The monkey had grabbed the wheel, and within minutes he'd run off the track."

The article concludes "The lesson is not to talk to the driver during the heat of battle, unless its absolutely vital. Dont feed the monkey".

I think thats a really good explanation for what happened to Perez, and a lesson to engineers coming on at the wrong time with useless information.
 
The effect of an interuption when someone is at the height of concentration is something even non-psychologists have known for yonks. That's why it seemed such an odd thing for his engineer to do. Even if Sergio's excursion was not immediately following the message planting the thought will certainly have contributed to his loss of rhythm. He was lucky his mistake happened where it did. Had it been into a gravel trap, well ... I would hope that his team take note and let the guy get on with his job.
 
Agreed. But not when you're in the heat of a fight...for first place...and the information given you is useless. It just takes your mind to the wrong place. If that engineer had needed to say 'your tyre is deflating', or something like that, thats different. But Perez was the only person able to make the call at that time as to how to drive the car. His flow was unneccessarily disrupted.
 
Indeed, but even the best can get caught out by it. Sometimes they can just "click out of rhythm" all by themselves. Senna's infamous spin out of the lead at Monaco springs to mind.
 
Fenderman said:
Indeed, but even the best can get caught out by it. Sometimes they can just "click out of rhythm" all by themselves. Senna's infamous spin out of the lead at Monaco springs to mind.
Click to expand

Absolutely, but the human mind naturally looks for patterns whether any are present or not. The laws of probability suggest that a mistake will come at the same time as a message at some point, what we'll never know is whether Sergio was going to hit that wet kerb anyway, nor whether Senna would have hit the wall if Prost had been taking it easier. Coincidence or causality?
 
... and therein lies a rub. We can debate, theorise and speculate to hearts content but forever it will remain a mystery. Is it any wonder then that humans also have this marvellous propensity for conspiracy theories when chaos, coincidence and causality throw up an interesting combination of circumstances? It's stuff like that which, to me at least, makes F1 (and any other human endeavour) more interesting than the sum of its parts. Four days on and we're still intrigued, mystified and engaged in conversation about a set of circumstances that lasted a mere moment in the scheme of things. Marvellous,
 
Probably varies. Around a lap or two's worth maybe? it would be handy to have the transceipt with the times included. Would they be available anywhere?

All I was saying earlier is that planting a thought in someone's head can upset their rhythm. That dosn't mean to say it actually did in this case.
 
Well if it was Perez' left-brain that received the radio call that caused him to "off" then it must have been his right-brain that pretty smartly slapped the left-brain into line and, on the same shot-to-bits tyres, still came perilously close to catching ALO again.

As a matter of curiosity I used to work in a call centre and I used to put the earpiece on left or right ear depending on whether I was selling (left ear, right brain, imaginative) or supporting customers (right ear, left brain, methodical and dull).

[Left ear feeds into right brain, right ear feeds into left brain, check it out for yourselves if you need to].

Perhaps teams should ensure that "your tyres are shredded" messages go into the right ear (ultimate destination being left brain) and the "go buddy, you're whupping his ass" messages go in the left ear.

?

Can I patent that idea?:D
 
That is fantastic Roadie. What a golden nugget of trivia. I'm off to learn more. There could be many applications for this in product design and I've never heard this before.
 
the_roadie said:
Well if it was Perez' left-brain that received the radio call that caused him to "off" then it must have been his right-brain that pretty smartly slapped the left-brain into line and, on the same shot-to-bits tyres, still came perilously close to catching ALO again.

As a matter of curiosity I used to work in a call centre and I used to put the earpiece on left or right ear depending on whether I was selling (left ear, right brain, imaginative) or supporting customers (right ear, left brain, methodical and dull).

[Left ear feeds into right brain, right ear feeds into left brain, check it out for yourselves if you need to].

Perhaps teams should ensure that "your tyres are shredded" messages go into the right ear (ultimate destination being left brain) and the "go buddy, you're whupping his ass" messages go in the left ear.?

Can I patent that idea?:D
Click to expand

Doesn't that have something to do with whether a person is left-handed or right-handed though?
 
Hmm. I am left handed in only two situations. The use of a pen and the use of a pool cue. There may be others that I have not discovered. What does this mean?

We've clearly gone off topic now, but it's a very interesting discussion.
 
ExtremeNinja said:
Hmm. I am left handed in only two situations. The use of a pen and the use of a pool cue. There may be others that I have not discovered. What does this mean?

We've clearly gone off topic now, but it's a very interesting discussion.
Click to expand


I like to think that we're still on-topic because it goes to the root of how, and why, Perez reacted to the radio message immediately before he had the only "off" of his race and while he was in a race-winning position, knackered tyres notwithstanding.
I might be pissing into the wind here, but I'm hoping for some benevolence from the Mods !
 
the_roadie said:
I like to think that we're still on-topic because it goes to the root of how, and why, Perez reacted to the radio message immediately before he had the only "off" of his race and while he was in a race-winning position, knackered tyres notwithstanding.
I might be pissing into the wind here, but I'm hoping for some benevolence from the Mods !
Click to expand
We're very benevolent, every time we ban someone we give a tenner to charity...

:P Just kidding, its certainly the best psychological analysis we've seen on this site!
 
the_roadie said:
Any southpaws want to come in on this?
Click to expand

Not personally but my best mate is Sinister(Latin for left handed) and he also claimed to me that when he was a kid and asked the doctors why they said it was because his brain was the wrong way round. For instance that most of us use the lefthand side of our brain to send messages about muscle movement and for some reason that means we have more control over our rightside. My mate was led to believe that it was the right hand side of his brain that controlled that movement hence why his left side is more prominant. He was left eyed as well so that makes sense (If you don't know what eye you are pretend your aiming a gun and whichever eye you naturally leave open to aim with is your prominant eye). So maybe for lefties we could turn Roadies theory around.

By the way we're not off topic because I'm sure I read that Sergio Perez was a leftie!
 

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