Sergio Perez says he is expecting to endure a “nightmare” Monaco Grand Prix as he will take the start from the back of the field following a crash during Q1.
Perez made heavy contact with the wall on the exit of the first corner, with his RB19 car sustaining terminal damage.
With Monaco’s tight layout offering little opportunity to overtake, Perez will have a sizeable task on his hands to recover up the order.
It’s a situation that is somewhat familiar to Red Bull – in 2018, Max Verstappen crashed out in Q1 and started from the back of the field, progressing up to ninth at the chequered flag.
Reflecting on his own costly shunt, Perez said: “It’s an unbelievable day, I cannot believe what I have done.
“It just caught me by surprise. Just getting that rear out of shape, especially really late into the corner. That really caught me out.
“It’s a way that we were trying to get a lap time out of it, but it just went over the limit and 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.
“I didn’t feel like I overpushed. That was a big mistake on my side and I’m very sorry to my team.”
Perez had hopes of winning back-to-back races at Monaco ahead of the weekend and eat into the championship deficit to team-mate Verstappen.
But with the two Red Bull drivers starting at opposite ends of the grid after Verstappen rocketed to pole, Perez admits that he is expecting to endure a challenging day on Sunday.
“[I’m] very sorry to my team because you put so much energy in, so much work preparing everything and to disappoint them like this is unfair to my team,” he said.
“So I’m super disappointed today with myself and I know tomorrow it’s going to be an impossible race.”
“It’s going to be a nightmare tomorrow. We can expect a very difficult race. Whatever you do, people just cover you and you end up in the same position, pretty much.”
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