'Very frustrated' Perez reacts to early knockout in sprint qualifying
Red Bull Contentpool
F1 News
Sergio Perez is frustrated after sprint qualifying. The Red Bull driver failed to reach the top ten in the United States and finished around one second behind his teammate Max Verstappen. He explains why this happened in a conversation with F1TV.
His teammate, Max Verstappen, secured pole position for the sprint race in Austin. Sergio Perez, on the other hand, had to make do with 11th place. "Very, very frustrating," Perez summarised.
What went wrong for Perez in sprint qualifying?
"Especially from SQ1 to SQ2, we didn't have any progression. If anything, we took a step back with the tyres, so that made things a lot trickier, unfortunately. But it is what it is at the end. Hopefully, we're able to learn quite a bit from the car and make sure that in qualifying we are able to put it all together," he continued.
During the only free practice session of the weekend, the Red Bull did not look bad. According to the Mexican, he struggled with the right side of his car at high speeds during sprint qualifying. Still, he is definitely confident for the rest of the weekend. "Our long run pace looked very promising this morning. So I think we've got some work to do still for the rest of the weekend. The main target is to be strong in the race."
The Red Bull Racing driver does not feel he was able to get the best out of the car in sprint qualifying. "I'm just struggling too much early on in the lap through the S section in Sector 1. It's a little bit too much of a struggle, so some work to do there," Perez said.
This article has been created in collaboration with Sandy van Wijngaarden