Competing at home, Sergio Pérez will start from fifth in the Formula 1 Mexican Grand Prix – having been surpassed by Daniel Ricciardo (AlphaTauri) in yesterday’s qualifying at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez.
In Pérez’s words, Ferrari’s one-two finish was unexpected, while he himself did not make progress throughout the three phases of qualifying: ‘I don’t know where the Ferraris came from, we weren’t expecting them to be that fast. Overall, I had a clean lap and it felt good, but I simply lacked progress throughout qualifying, which I didn’t fully understand and it really hurt us. Not having a set of new tires in Q3 wasn’t ideal, that probably cost us in terms of evolution, as we were using a used tire’.
Although the qualifying objective was not achieved, Pérez still has hopes of achieving a strong result at home: ‘We wanted to be in the top two rows, but we’re still in fifth and a lot can happen in the race. I need to overtake four cars and anything can be done in this sport. It’s a long race and it’s a long way to turn one, we know that overtaking can be very difficult here, but anything can happen and I know I have the support of this crowd behind me’.
