Sergio Perez's Mexico City Grand Prix qualifying ended in disaster at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, with the Red Bull driver eliminated in Q1.
The local hero blamed his struggles on the re-emergence of a braking issue on his RB20 that thwarted his efforts and left him a lowly P18 at the end of the first segment of qualifying.
For Perez, Saturday’s qualifying debacle is another bitter blow in a stretch of difficult weekends.
"I've been struggling quite a bit with braking,” he explained in the wake of his elimination.
“Every time I try attack the braking, I just put too much energy through the tyres and that makes it very tricky for me to stop the car.
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"It's been there for the last three races where I cannot stop the car. I'm having to modulate my braking quite a lot and that's something we can see in the data, but we are not able to fix it at the moment.
“It's mainly on the straight line I cannot stop the car. I just slide too much and given that it's all surface sensitivity here, it makes it a lot harder."
With his braking woes extending into longer runs, Perez expressed doubts over a potential recovery drive in Sunday’s race.
Starting outside the top 15, the challenge will not just be about making up positions but managing his car’s handling issues that could limit his pace.
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“We will discuss all the options,” Perez said when asked about his approach to the race which might include a pitlane start to enable Red Bull to overhaul his car’s set-up
“The problem is that we are also very tight on parts that we have available. We don’t have the spec of floor that we would like to go on to. I don’t know, we will discuss it for sure with the team.
“It’s going to be hard because it’s also present there in the long run, so I will try everything, I will try and see what we are able to do with the team and see what solutions we are able to find.”
Perez’s frustrating situation inevitably comes as a huge blow in front of the Mexican’s fervent home crowd, which has turned out in droves to support their national hero.
"It's obviously very disappointing,” he said. “If there's a grand prix that I want to do really well, it's this one. Unfortunately, this event has been really difficult and tricky."
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