Photo: Red Bull Racing
Sergio Perez believes his lap was good even though not good enough to beat his Red Bull stablemate.
The Mexican showed today that he will put up a fight this year and missed pole only by a small margin of +0.138s.
Perez agreed with Verstappen on how much the Red Bull´s have struggled to find the right balance and he explained that they compromised quali pace thinking ahead for tomorrow´s race. The Mexican driver accepted his lap was good but not enough to beat Verstappen.
“Just like Max said, you know, the balance has been really different from testing. We’ve done plenty of kilometres here but we came to the race weekend and we found a very different balance to testing. So, we’ve been working our way through, we’ve been making massive changes from one side to the other. I think in the end, we knew we had to compromise a bit the quali-pace for tomorrow’s race. So hopefully that will pay out tomorrow. Generally, I wasn’t that comfortable with my balance in qualifying. But I think, as I progress, I was able to learn my way around the balance I had and get a good Q3 lap in the end, but not enough to beat Max.”
Asked to expand on what had been the struggles of the Red Bulls, Perez didn´t want to go into much detail and expects that the team will find out the reason of the struggles after the weekend.
“Well, I wouldn’t go too much in detail. It’s just that we found quite a different car to what we had in testing and we don’t understand what’s the reason behind it: could be wind; the relative temperature; many variants that I think after the weekend, we will have a bit more of an idea. But for now, we’ve got a focus for tomorrow.”
Consulted if the car was the same he had during testing or it was an upgraded version Perez answered:
“As far as I know, it´s the same.”
Perez expects Ferrari to be strong during the weekend and believes that many more teams have closed the gap to the front increasing the competition during Q1 and Q2.
“Well, the Ferraris definitely picked up throughout. I think there were sandbagging a bit through the first days of testing and in during the weekend. They’re definitely there. They’re very strong. So, I will expect them to be in the fight for tomorrow’s race. And you can already see, you know, that it is not only Red Bull and Ferrari there are plenty of other teams that have joined the competition. So, I mean, if you don’t get a perfect lap in Q2, Q1, you really have to put more tyres on. So, yeah, the competition has increased certainly for this season.”
