Sergio Perez has admitted he “explored” his Pink Bull F1 automobile “a bit of an excessive amount of” as he slumped to a disappointing qualifying outcome on the Spanish Grand Prix.
Pink Bull began the Barcelona weekend on the again foot, however Max Verstappen was solely narrowly pipped to pole place by McLaren’s Lando Norris. Perez, nonetheless, may solely take eighth in his Pink Bull, some six tenths adrift of his teammate.
P8 will flip into eleventh for Sunday’s grand prix as soon as Perez has his three-place grid penalty utilized for driving his automobile in an unsafe situation after crashing in Canada final trip.
“Sadly, my closing sector was in Q3 a bit of bit too poor. I misplaced a bit an excessive amount of in comparison with myself. I believe we may have been loads nearer,” Perez defined.
“We solely had one single set, in order that made issues a bit of bit tough. The wind modified a bit. However general, I believe we have been a bit of bit too far [away] this weekend.
“We have been chasing the stability once in a while. However I really feel like we have performed some good steps, which made me really feel a bit of bit extra snug. Margins are so small. I believe to actually discover these issues, I wanted the development, and I did not have that development via the weekend.
“So we’ll work on that, and hopefully tomorrow we’ll have a superb race automobile. We’ve to work loads on that as effectively. So we have compromised a bit of bit qualifying for hopefully a superb tyre degradation.”
Perez, who reached Q3 for the primary time in 4 races after struggling consecutive Q1 eliminations in Monaco and Canada, added: “I believe we explored the automobile loads. I believe we struggled much more than we anticipated in Barcelona.
“Clearly the correlation generally might be good, generally not. I believe tyre points have been additionally a little bit of a handout. So it has been fairly exhausting to select up a route over the weekend, however I believe we’re simply getting there.
“Hopefully tomorrow we’re capable of present some good race tempo and switch the web page shortly.”
Requested if he made a whole lot of modifications to his automobile after Friday observe, Perez replied: “Yeah, we have been exploring the automobile rather a lot. A bit of bit an excessive amount of.”
And Perez admitted he has “some work to do” to shut the numerous hole to teammate Verstappen.
“I believe right here it has been way more of a wrestle than final 12 months,” he stated. “As a result of final 12 months it was right down to the situations. It was damp and I went out in Q2.
“I believe right here it was extra of a stability limitation that I struggled with. The hole to Max has been a bit of bit too far on the weekend. So we have some work to do in that regard.”
