Perez 'caught out' by underestimating Q1 track improvement

Sergio Perez was shocked to miss out on making it beyond the first round of qualifying at the Autodromo Nazionale Monza for this weekend's Italian Grand Prix.

The Force India team admitted that they had underestimated how much the track would improve in the final minutes of Q1, having dried out following overnight rain.

The team thought it was safe to keep Perez in the garage at the end of the session. But the lap time Perez had set early in the session which had looked more than enough to avoid elimination ended up proving too slow - by an agonising 0.001s!

"I am very disappointed to go out in Q1," the Mexican driver admitted. "It’s very hard to digest.

"We thought we were safe but we underestimated how much the track would evolve in just a few minutes.

"It’s frustrating because we had so much potential to be right behind the top three teams this weekend and instead we are out after just one run.

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"We were only two tenths behind Esteban in P7, but with such a close field the margins are very small and we lost out by just one thousandth of a second.

"We have to admit we made a mistake as a team," he added. "The call not to go out was wrong, but I also should have done a better lap during my first run. I lost some time and that left us vulnerable."

Force India team principal Otmar Szafnauer shared the blame for the costly error in strategy.

"We didn’t maximise our performance today," he admitted. "In Q1 we underestimated the track evolution and power of the slipstream, and simply got caught out with Checo.

"We thought we had done enough to progress to Q2, but missed out in the very final moments," he sighed.

Having finished the session in 16th place, grid penalties for Daniel Ricciardo and Nico Hulkenberg will mean that Perez actually advances to 14th place for the start of tomorrow's race.

"The plan for tomorrow is to minimise the damage we’ve done today. We’re still going to try to make it back into the top ten and bring home some points.

"Our car has pace, just like last week, but it’s going to be hard work to get through the field.”

His team mate Esteban Ocon was able to avoid elimination in Q1. Proving the true pace of the VJM11 he made it all the way to the final pole shot-out round and will line-up in eighth place.

"Esteban was able to better demonstrate the speed of the car and progressed comfortably through to Q3," noted Szafnauer.

"We have a quick car and showed good pace over the long runs yesterday so I think we can be strong in the race and bring home some good points.”

Even so, Ocon was also disappointed with how the session had gone this week, given their stand-out performance in last week's qualifying at Spa.

“It was a very close session and I was actually hoping for a bit more than P8 because I think P6 was achievable today," he said.

"Unfortunately I didn’t maximise the slipstream at the right moment on my final run and that cost me some top speed.

"Hopefully we can make up those positions tomorrow because our car pace is strong and there should be some overtaking opportunities.”

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