It was crushing disappointment for Sergio Pérez in qualifying for the Monaco Grand Prix as the 2022 winner crashed out of qualifying in the opening segment.
FP3 had been very promising for the 33-year-old as he lapped within a tenth of teammate Max Verstappen and finished P2 on the leaderboard after a difficult Friday.
However, things all went wrong in Q1 as he had a heavy crash into Saint Devote. The Mexican carried too much speed into the opening turn and lost the rear. It was game over.
“I can’t believe what I’ve done. It just caught me by surprise, you know. Just getting that rear out of shape, especially really late into the corner. That really caught me out.
“It’s a way of how we were trying to get the lap time out of it, but it just went over the limit. I became a passenger. There was nothing else I could do because it was really late in the corner.
“I could not cut the corner or go out of the corner.”
Pérez had already completed a banker lap in Q1 that put him just behind his teammate on the timesheets, just like in final practice.
However, at the start of the next lap, his day would be done. The two-time winner believes he didn’t push too hard too soon.
“It was going alrght. I didn’t feel like I overpushed it. That was a big mistake from my side and I’m very sorry to my team.”
Pérez did not want to use the excuse of the surprise that he felt when he lost the rear of the RB19.
Instead he was apologetic to the team, and he realises what a long day is ahead of him tomorrow starting at the back in Monaco.
“Yes [loosing the rear], it came around as a big surprise. Saying that is not an excuse. I should have done better today.
“All I can say is I’m very sorry to my team because you put so much energy, so much work preparing everything and then you just disappoint everyone like this. It’s unfair to my team. I’m super disappointed today with myself.
“I know that tomorrow it’s going to be an impossible race.”
Photo credit: Red Bull Content Pool
