Sergio Perez rued what he described as a “pretty disappointing” qualifying session as he slumped to 10th place on the grid for the Formula 1 United States Grand Prix.
The Mexican has endured another torrid weekend in Austin, coming home in ninth place in the Sprint race, having been eliminated in SQ2 as he qualified in 11th place.
In qualifying for the Grand Prix on Saturday afternoon, he made it into Q3 but was unable to gain any further ground, ending up last of the runners in the closing stage.
Perez initially sat in eighth place on the timesheets, but he had the lap that placed him there deleted due to exceeding track limits.
When he was looking to move further up the order on his final run, George Russell’s crash in the final moments at the penultimate corner curtailed his charge.
Speaking afterwards, Perez rued that luck was not on his side, leaving him in a less-than-enviable position for the race.
“Yeah, we changed the car quite a lot going into qualifying,” he said. “I think everything went in the right direction. The track, the tyres were coming to us.
“We were learning a lot from the tyres from the out laps and unfortunately, yeah, that Q3. I didn’t get to do a lap.
“It’s pretty disappointing because I think we had pretty good pace.”
Red Bull’s upgrades not on Perez’s car
Perez also revealed that, despite his positivity about the pace of his Red Bull, he is without the upgrades that are on team-mate Max Verstappen’s car.
“Yeah, we as a team have done a pretty good step in the right direction,” he added.
“I obviously don’t have the latest upgrade, which is looking good on Max’s car. I think the car is definitely working better.
“And we were probably on the wrong side of the setup with the sprint event. We did improve that a lot. So, yeah, things were looking a lot better.
“I went P5 in Q2, so things were coming to us, but, yeah, it’s pretty unfortunate.”
“Hopefully tomorrow [today] the race pace will be there and we can be able to recover.”
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