Sergio Perez says he felt he was going into qualifying “blind” after a crash in FP2 for the Italian Grand Prix limited his preparation.
Perez’s FP2 session was cut short after a spin in the latter stage of the session saw his RB19 end Friday’s running in the tyre wall at Parabolica.
The spin cost the Mexican some crucial track time in the closing minutes of the session but also compromised his FP3 running.
Red Bull soon discovered an oil leak, which saw Perez out of the car early as the team set to work on switching to an older power unit from his pool.
Perez could only qualify fifth for the Italian Grand Prix, while team-mate Max Verstappen was beaten to pole by Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz.
When asked if he was pleased with his performance in qualifying, the 33-year-old said: “Yes, considering the situation, missing FP3, basically going blind, I didn’t run new tyres today before qualifying, and it wasn’t an ideal day.
“But it is what it is. I think given how small the margins were, our preparation was not ideal. We had a lot of pace yesterday, I think yesterday was looking great. But unfortunately, we didn’t get to show what we were able to do today”
While describing his FP2 mishap as “not really” a setback, Perez noted that it was certainly a contributing factor to his struggles on Saturday.
“This sort of thing can happen. It just disrupted the situation for us in terms of just having issues with the setup of the car for this morning,” he explained.
“And unfortunately, we had issues also with the engine, so we had to change it. Yeah, it was a little bit too much.”
With the Italian GP playing host to the second trial of Pirelli’s Alternate Tyre Allocation, mandating the drivers to run the Hard, Medium and Soft in each of the three qualifying stages respectively, Perez had missed out on some valuable running on the red-walled tyre ahead of qualifying.
“It’s quite tricky, especially if you have an issue like I did, you go completely blind, and the first time you run the soft tyres is in Q3, and you are always a step behind,” he explained.
Looking ahead to the race on Sunday, Perez is hoping to steer clear of the traditional first-lap chaos that can be thrown up by the Monza circuit.
“The further up you are the better,” he acknowledged. “I’m in the third row, so hopefully I can get into the second row. I don’t want to go all the way to the lead, but obviously I want to get in some positions, and hopefully tomorrow we can do it.
“It will be crucial for us tomorrow to be able to go with the pack, not to lose any race time, not to use the tyres more than we want.”
