“It was a big shame,” Sergio Perez believes ‘issues’ with the car stopped him from fighting for pole position at home Mexican GP
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Sergio Perez
While Sergio Perez was hoping for a perfect home weekend at the Mexico City Grand Prix, till now, it certainly has not been optimal. Pole position would have certainly been the goal here, but the Mexican driver instead had to settle for P4, right beside Lewis Hamilton in P3, and George Russell (P2) and Max Verstappen, who starts on pole position.
But ‘Checo’ suffered from a variety of issues in qualifying, as he told Sky Sports: “It was a big shame. We had an electrical issue throughout qualifying, with DRS we were struggling and so on. It was just important to make sure we got everything right but I was pretty much blind through qualifying. I had no reference lap time, I had no information of my brake balance at times, so it was just a mess.”
Perez believes he could have fought for pole position, if not for the issues he faced: “And when I look back at my qualifying, I nearly got knocked out in Q1 and Q2, so to be P4 is not the end of the world – but I really believe today we could have fought for pole position.” but pole position does not seem to be ‘that’ important in Mexico, as the man on pole here has only won 2 out of the last 6 races.
Regardless, it would have delighted the Mexican crowd, but Sergio Perez will have another shot at that in Sunday’s race. There are no points for pole positions, after all. The fact that P2 championship rival Charles Leclerc only qualified P7 is another thing that he has going for himself.
Sergio Perez with the advantage over Charles Leclerc
Sergio Perez also went onto the track earlier than the others every time, but there was a reason for this, as he wanted to get better acquainted with a car giving him issues, and then as he said, do his own thing: “We just wanted to do our own thing, we believed there was nothing to gain by going later.”
The team also thought that the track evolution was insignificant, and as such, the priority was to avoid traffic, and drive in clean air in order to put in the best benchmark they could: “We believed it was pretty small so we didn’t want to be out there with traffic. What I really liked was to have a bit of a reference for my lap, and also knowing where I was with brake balances and stuff.”
When asked about the crowd, Perez replied: “It’s amazing, it’s a great crowd to have, and I’m very proud of my country, and what they do for Formula 1. It’s a massive event.”
Like Perez, his ‘championship rival’ Charles Leclerc also had issues with his car during qualifying, in addition to engine issues, he also had a DRS issue on the final lap. In fact, he lost 10 km/h on the final straight before the stadium section. This will be a very important weekend for the P2 battle, and right now, Perez has the advantage on paper.
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