Sergio Perez has accepted blame for his first lap clash with fellow Cadillac Formula 1 Valtteri Bottas in China, and admitted that hitting your team mate is “the worst feeling you can have.”

Perez went for a gap in the inside only to find it disappearing, and after clipping Bottas, lost time with a spin.

Bottas suffered floor damage but continued to finish 13th, while Perez overcame some later PU issues to take 15th for a first double finish in only Cadillac’s second race.

“That was all on me,” said the Mexican when asked by Crash.net about the incident. “I saw the gap. I went for it, but obviously, looking at it, Valtteri didn’t have anywhere to go, unfortunately. It ended up costing me the race, because I spun, and I lost a lot of time.”

He added: “That’s the worst feeling you can have, for myself, for the team. Luckily, nothing really happened. And the incident, I just think it was just a misjudgement from my side.”

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Perez has had controversial clashes with team-mates in the past, notably Esteban Ocon at Force India, and he was relieved that Bottas had no issues with him after the race.

“I think it’s how it should be,” he said. “When there are no bad intentions between team-mates and when you look at the incident, and straight away I think it’s important just to apologise and realise that you messed up, and that’s how it is.

“Sometimes you make mistakes. And unfortunately, it was with Valtteri, but I’m happy he finished the race.”

The safety car allowed Perez to catch up with Bottas, but PU issues then hampered him.

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

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“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 cleaning 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.”

Bottas: Cadillac will “look into” Perez contact

Meanwhile, Bottas admitted that the damage from the first lap nudge had hindered his progress.

“I had big piece missing from the floor on the left side, so that didn’t help,” he said. “I felt the contact. I didn’t really know he was there, but all good in the end.

“We will look into it, we’ll look at what we could have done differently. But in the end, we both finished.”

Bottas was delighted to have made the flag after retirements in Melbourne and in the Shanghai sprint, even if his final position was flattered by a high attrition rate.

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“Very, very happy to be 13th in our second Grand Prix for the team, getting already close to the points,” he said. “Of course, there was many DNFs, but it’s a good one for us.

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

Regarding upgrades, he said: “We are planning to have something for almost every race now, so for sure, something for Japan, and then hopefully something bigger after the spring break.”

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