The recent difficulties of Perez persisted in Barcelona. Sergio Perez clarified that the main reason behind his recent struggles in the Spanish Formula 1 Grand Prix was the inability to “find the right balance for the car at different speeds”.
Perez’s poor performance continued in Barcelona, where he finished in eighth place, earning less than ten points in the last four races. Although the Mexican driver managed to reach Q3 this time, he qualified behind an Alpine car, in eighth place, six tenths of a second behind his Red Bull teammate, Max Verstappen.
Despite starting three positions behind due to a penalty from Canada, Perez managed to recover through a three-stop strategy. Perez expressed frustration at his inability to progress in the early stages of the race, as excessive wear on the soft tires made the experience a “nightmare”.
“Yes, with the penalty we had, it was extremely difficult to overtake in the first part of the race, and then my race was ruined,” lamented Perez. “I was stuck behind Nico [Hulkenberg] and was struggling to control the car. It was a disastrous race. We switched to a three-stop strategy and managed to catch up to [Pierre] Gasly and secure eighth place, but it was a tough battle. The first part compromised everything.”
Perez attributed his ongoing qualifying difficulties to the car’s balance issues, which prevent him from pushing the car to its limit. “I believe I understood better what went wrong during the weekend and the race,” he explained. “The balance was off, especially on the soft tires, which affected our qualifying performance. But we can recover.”
Deepening his difficulties, Perez revealed that he is facing challenges in finding the right balance for the car at different cornering speeds. “I am struggling with the front of the car. I can’t achieve the desired rotation and I can’t put the power down,” he clarified. “At the moment, I am having difficulties in finding the right balance for the car at different speeds. I am particularly struggling in medium to low-speed corners, where I need more stability and rotation. I am working closely with the team to solve this problem. We made some aggressive changes for the weekend, which didn’t work, so we will reassess them.”
Perez admitted that making drastic changes to the setup during practice, in a desperate attempt to find a solution, ended up going wrong and contributed to his disappointing result. “Our weekend was chaotic in terms of testing various setup options during FP1 and FP2,” he emphasized. “We tried several changes, maybe more than necessary, in our search for the right balance. We need to analyze all of this, but I can see some positive signs.”
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