Sergio Perez says he lacked progression in Saturday’s qualifying in Mexico, the local hero insisting that not having a new set of soft tyres in Q3 proved costly for his chances of securing pole.
Perez ultimately qualified fifth, 0.257s adrift from Ferrari poleman Charles Leclerc and two spots behind his Red Bull teammate Max Verstappen.
The Mexican was also outqualified by AlphaTauri’s Daniel Ricciardo, while he’ll start his race on Sunday afternoon at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez alongside the Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton.
But Perez considered that using an extra set of softs in Q2, which subsequently deprived him of a new set in the final segment of qualifying, was the main factor that limited his performance during the final shootout.
“Our progression in Q3 wasn’t great, we ended up losing one set that potentially we didn’t need to, but, obviously, you only know that after qualifying,” said.
“I think that really hurt us in the progression we had in Q3, when you are talking about one tenth and a half or two tenths, that would have changed our life completely, so this is the way it is.”
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Asked if Ricciardo’s remarkable result put extra pressure on his situation at Red Bull, Perez said: “Daniel did a tremendous lap.”
“I don’t think it’s just Daniel who wants my seat,” he added. “Let’s say there is a lot of other drivers that want to be in that seat, and it’s great. If it’s what they deserve then [I’m] happy for them.”
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While his teammate basks in the glory of his third F1 world title and continues to dominant all his rivals, Perez is still struggling to turn around his fortunes.
The 33-year-old believes that his run to P4 in Austin last weekend was a validation of his progress.
“Yes, we already made the progress in Austin, we are also making progress here, so I think we are on a good level with the car,” he said.
“But today was very difficult. Every single set of tyres I had today performed differently, so it’s a track that is difficult to get the most out of it.
“I don’t want to go too much into detail but certainly I’ll say that we got lost on a few weekends with the set-up and we took a reset and I think for us, it’s looking better.
“[We are] starting set-ups a lot closer and just diverging through the weekend on things that we want to achieve differently.”
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