A superb drive to a podium finish has Sergio Perez confident that he is back in the fight.

By Friday afternoon it appeared the Mexican's season was going from bad to worse, an early casualty of the track limits crackdown that was to overshadow the weekend, for the fourth successive race the Red Bull driver failed to make it to Q3.

Redemption came in part the following day when he finished second to teammate, Max Verstappen, while on Sunday he stormed through the field to claim the final podium position.

Starting the race from 15th on the grid, slowly working his way through the field, he was up to ninth by the time the VSC was deployed, opting not to pit he was able to progress to third, behind Charles Leclerc.

Though he lost out to Carlos Sainz, who was on fresher rubber, then Lewis Hamilton and Lando Norris, by the time he made his first stop he was sixth, rejoining in tenth.

Again he worked his way through the field, and by the time he made his second stop he was up to second, subsequently emerging from the pits in fifth.

First he picked off Norris, however, Sainz proved to be a little more difficult. Whilst teammate Max Verstappen had been able to use DRS trickery to pass Leclerc earlier in the race, in his battle with Sainz the Mexican found the tables turned.

For several laps the pair battled until Perez finally pulled a move that stuck.

"It's really nice to get back to the podium," he told reporters. "And on the weekend that started really bad, you know, with... I don't know how to say it, I want to use a bad that word, but for the track limits. That meant that we started P15 for the race today, and we just had to fight our way through it.

"We had some great pace, some great battles out there, but in the end it's a good one, especially not being close to 100 percent physically, but with the adrenaline going on, you forget about everything.

"Without the issues we had on Friday, we had good pace since Lap 1," he continued. "We managed to understand our issues we had in the previous races, so yeah, I believe that we are back."

The Mexican had been excused media duties on Thursday after feeling unwell. Indeed, post-race he still wasn't feeling 100 percent.

"Definitely not great," he said. "I haven't had a good rest, every night I've had a fever, and when that happens, and then you are on medications, automatically you are not 100 percent at all.

"It's a very demanding sport, in the car, out of the car, and yeah, I've just been really, really weak," he added. "I really hope that I can recover in a few days because Silverstone, it's another very hard race, very demanding, so I really need time. I'm really far from 100 percent at the moment."

Check out our Sunday gallery from the Red Bull Ring here.