Perez bracing for 'painful day' after 'messed up' qualifying

Sergio Perez fears he'll be facing a "painful" Eifel Grand Prix after a "messed up" qualifying left the Racing Point driver ninth in the pecking order.

Perez says his team was under a lot of pressure on Saturday afternoon, having to contend with teammate Lance Stroll's forfeit and his replacement on the spot by Nico Hulkenberg.

"It all changed very quickly with Lance not coming in this morning, I could see some stress in the team, I didn’t really know what was happening," Perez explained.

"I hope health-wise Lance is okay and we can have him back soon.

"For Nico as well it was tough to jump straight into qualifying so yeah it isn’t looking great for tomorrow having both Renaults there, the Ferrari, it can be a painful day in the championship tomorrow."

The Mexican says his relatively poor qualifying was due to a botched strategy that allowed him only a single run in Q3.

"I think we should definitely be higher up, we messed up a bit with our strategy," he said.

"We thought we had a bit more pace and we tried the medium in Q1 which meant we lost basically a set for Q3.

• Read also: Stroll convinced to pull out of Eifel GP by 'flu-like symptoms'

"We only had one set in Q3 and I reckon the track changed a lot in that final run, the wind picked up a lot, the balance was pretty bad and unfortunately I only had one set.

"I went through on a single set of Softs so we could run a bit better in that regard but these conditions, whenever it is windy it can hurt us quite a bit."

With only one car starting among the top ten on the grid, Racing Point will have its work cut out to maintain its fourth place in the Constructors' standings in between McLaren and Renault who qualified both their drivers among the first half of the field.

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