Sergio Perez admits blame for Valtteri Bottas collision and jokes ‘I need a mushroom’

Sergio Perez took full responsibility for his Chinese GP collision with Cadillac teammate Valtteri Bottas. He also had time for a Mario Kart “mushroom” quip during the race.

Perez was not the only driver to drop a Mario Kart reference in Shanghai. His former Red Bull teammate Max Verstappen did the same in a scathing assessment of the F1 2026 regulations.

Sergio Perez admits fault for Valtteri Bottas crash in Chinese Grand Prix

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Perez took a look down the inside of the sister Cadillac at Turn 4 at the start. It was a door which quickly closed. The teammates made contact, and Perez was sent into a spin.

“That was all on me,” Perez told the media post-race, holding his hands up to causing the incident. “I saw the gap, I went for it. But obviously, looking at it, Valtteri had nowhere to go.

“It ended up costing me the race because I spun, I lost a lot of time.

“Luckily, I managed to come back to the field, and then on the second stint, I was about to overtake Valtteri with the overtake mode on, and I lost the battery. So I lost like five seconds. And then later on, I lost another 15 or 20 seconds.

“So in general, I think the positive thing is that we finished with both cars. The negative is that, I think we have a lot of tuning to do, in a lot of areas, to make sure that we don’t lose track position, and we arrive to the races a lot more prepared.”

Further reflecting on his Bottas collision, Perez said: “I mean, that’s the worst feeling you can have, for myself, for the team.

“Luckily, nothing really happened, and the incident I think was just a misjudgement from my side.”

With both Aston Martins ultimately retiring from the Chinese Grand Prix, the Cadillac pair had been left to battle among themselves.

In a moment captured on Perez’s onboard camera – one which was not broadcast on the world feed – Perez can be heard, via his team radio, quipping: “I need a mushroom now [laughs]. It disappeared, the mushroom. I don’t know what happened.”

That was a Mario Kart-shaped dig at the new F1 2026 regulations, and the prominent role which the batteries are playing in overtaking.

Perez had called the overtaking “very fake” ahead of the Chinese GP race weekend.

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Ultimately, Bottas finished the race in P13, marking Cadillac’s best result yet in these early stages of the American team’s F1 journey.

Perez crossed the line 15th, the last of the classified runners.

Cadillac were boosted by a double McLaren DNS, while Audi’s Gabriel Bortoleto and Williams’ Alex Albon also failed to take the start.

“I had a big piece missing from the floor on the left side, so that didn’t help,” Bottas revealed post-race, in reference to his collision with Perez.

“I felt the contact. I didn’t really know he was there. But all good in the end.

“Very, very happy to be 13th. In our second grand prix for the team, getting already close to the points. Of course, there were many DNFs, but it’s a good one for us.”

Bottas was feeling “very proud” of Cadillac to have finished with both cars in only the team’s second race.

He added: “For sure we’re lacking pace. We can see that it’s pretty much only Aston at the moment that we can fight with, but at least we can fight with them.

“But if we want to beat some other teams, then we need more performance.”

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