Sergio Perez says he went into qualifying for the Formula 1 Race of Italy “basically blind” after an accident in Friday’s second practice session limited his preparation.
The Mexican finished fifth in Q1 and fourth in Q2 before finishing fifth in the final session, all the while struggling to match the pace of his teammate Max Verstappen.
As the second test of Pirelli’s alternative tire allocation, with fewer sets of tires and the mandatory use of hard, medium and soft tires across the three qualifying sessions, Monza was difficult for all drivers.
However, Perez made life difficult for himself when he spun into the tire barriers in the second practice session at the Parabolica, missing a couple of crucial laps at the end of the session.
This also affected the third practice session, in which he was only able to complete a few laps. After an oil leak that interrupted his session, he had to change the power unit, with the team using one that was already in use for qualifying.
“Not an ideal day”
Perez emphasizes that he is happy to have saved fifth place: “Yeah, considering I missed FP3, basically driving blind and didn’t put new tires on before qualifying today, it wasn’t ideal day,” he says. “But that’s the way it is.”
“Considering how close the gaps were, our preparation wasn’t ideal. Yesterday we had good pace. I think it looked good yesterday, but unfortunately we couldn’t show what we’re capable of today,” said the Mexican .
Perez denied that the accident was a setback, apart from the impact on track time: “No, not really,” he says. “Something like that can happen. It only bothered us insofar as we had problems with the car this morning.”
“And unfortunately we also had problems with the engine, so we had to change it. That was a bit too much,” he argues.
He admits that it’s not easy to optimize the car for the three tires that will be used in qualifying: “It’s quite tricky, especially when you have a problem like I had, you drive completely blind and the first time you use the soft tires is in Q3 and you’re always a step behind.”
Straight ahead at the start?
Perez hopes to stay away from problems in the first lap: “The further up you are, the better,” he says. “I’m on the third row, so I’m hoping to make it to the second.”
“I don’t want to go all the way up the field, but of course I want to make up a few positions and hopefully we can do that tomorrow,” he said of his ambitions on the first lap.
“Tomorrow it will be crucial for us to keep up with the field, not to lose race time and not to stress the tires more than necessary.”
Interestingly, however, he dismisses claims that Ferrari don’t have the race pace to fight on Sunday: “We haven’t seen that yet. But we’ll see tomorrow. It’s going to be a long race.”