The weekend has not been good on Sergio Perez’s side as he was P12, P8 and P5 in the free practice sessions. It got worse during qualifying for the Mexican as he was unable to get out of Q1.
A previous race winner on the streets of Monte Carlo, he set his first flying lap in qualifying with a 1:13.981, slotting into P9. But Perez was quickly pushed down to P18 as a lot of drivers made gains.
Perez then set a 1:12.698 placing him only P14 as his teammate Verstappen was in P3. He soon dropped into the elimination zone as Albon, Ocon and Tsunoda improved.
Perez went for one more flying lap but failed to move from P18 as traffic hampered him, as well as stickers falling off the advertising placed on the barriers.
“It was a disaster because we […] Firstly on my lap I encountered a lot of traffic into 6, into 7 and there were some stickers laying down apex of 8 so I had to avoid all of that. Ended up losing a couple of tenths.
“That would have been enough to get through. I mean I was half a second off P1 so it was just a complete disaster unfortunately.”
Monaco is one of the tracks on the calendars where qualifying plays an important role as it is nearly impossible to overtake. Perez is disappointed as his chances of getting points all but ended on Saturday.
“And basically the weekend is totally over because here there is no chance to overtake unfortunately.”
The Mexican was P5 in FP3 in the morning, finally gaining pace of after they struggled with on Friday. But it went to waste for Perez due to traffic disrupting his laps around Monte Carlo.
“It was P5, we made some more changes but unfortunately they were not enough to come through. It hurts a lot because I think just by putting a normal lap in would have been enough but with the traffic that we encountered it was really difficult.”
Nico Hülkenberg and Kevin Magnussen got handed DSQ’s from qualifying, moving Perez up to P16 on the grid.
