AUSTIN — Saturday’s qualifying session at the United States Grand Prix was a tale of “what could have been” for Sergio Pérez.
The Red Bull driver advanced into Q3 and was sitting eighth after the first set of push laps, but his time was subsequently deleted due to exceeding track limits. Pérez then attempted a second push lap, but that was cut short when George Russell spun into the barrier, a hard shunt that brought an end to qualifying.
Speaking with the media, including SB Nation, after qualifying on Saturday Pérez outlined that it was “pretty disappointing” that he did not get to finish that lap, as in his mind the pace was there.
“Yeah, we changed the car quite a lot going into qualifying. I think everything went in the right direction. The track, the tires were coming to us,” began Perez. “We were learning a lot from the tires 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.”
Pérez noted that the RB20 has taken a “good step in the right direction,” something the team was hoping to see at the United States Grand Prix this week after some struggles over recent race weekends.
“Yeah, we as a team have done a pretty good step in the right direction.
I obviously don’t have the latest upgrade, which is looking good on Max [Verstappen’s car]. I think the car is definitely working better,” added Pérez. “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.”
Starting tenth on the grid, Pérez is in position to push into the points, now he’ll need to rely in race pace to carry the day.
“Hopefully tomorrow the race pace will be there and we can be able to recover,” concluded Pérez on Saturday night in Austin.
