Sergio Perez says his fight with Charles Leclerc on the final flying lap cost him enough time to force him out of SQ1 of the Qatar Grand Prix.
The Red Bull driver was already close to the drop zone when he launched his final attempt, but Leclerc was just inside him as he raced into the first corner. Perez continued to lap, leading on the outside, but his progress was not great enough to keep him out of danger and he ended up missing out by 0.013 seconds.
“Unfortunately we left a little late.” Perez explained. “I had a problem with one of the anti-roll bars and we were all opening up a gap to get the last lap and then Charles came and fought in turn one and so on and I lost two tenths there.
“It was enough to be knocked out. It was a shame because I thought we had really made progress with the car from P1 to qualifying. We had so much more potential and it’s a shame we ended up here.”
Perez, who starts from 16th in a sprint race without pit stops, admitted he had little chance of being in the points race with only the top eight cars scoring.
“I think it will be very difficult. “For now, I will focus on the rest of the weekend,” he said. “I don’t think there’s much we can do in a race this short. But yes, I will try.”
It also wasn’t a particularly strong session for the other Red Bull’s newly crowned world champion, Max Verstappen. Because he finished 6th in the sprint and felt his weekend would be difficult.
“To be honest, the speed is not too fast,” Verstappen said. “It’s too slow. There is absolutely no balance to attack. It’s really difficult around that because the car is a little off when you enter the middle of the corner. Very fast speeds are fine, but everything else isn’t fine, it’s just hard to push. I think P6 is where we need to be, maybe it’s actually P7, but of course it’s not where you want to be.
“I think the sprint is probably difficult because you have to fight the cars around you just with the balance of the car. Then we’ll see if we can improve things a bit in the other qualifiers. But don’t expect it to suddenly flip over, and it works. “It wasn’t that surprising, let’s put it that way.”
