Sergio Perez “explored” Red Bull F1 car “a little bit too much” as struggles continue

Sergio Perez has admitted he “explored” his Red Bull F1 car “a little too much” as he slumped to a disappointing qualifying result at the Spanish Grand Prix.

Red Bull started the Barcelona weekend on the back foot, but Max Verstappen was only narrowly pipped to pole position by McLaren’s Lando Norris. Perez, however, could only take eighth in his Red Bull, some six tenths adrift of his teammate.

P8 will turn into 11th for Sunday’s grand prix once Perez has his three-place grid penalty applied for driving his car in an unsafe condition after crashing in Canada last time out.

“Unfortunately, my final sector was in Q3 a little bit too poor. I lost a bit too much compared to myself. I think we could have been a lot closer,” Perez explained.

“We only had one single set, so that made things a little bit tricky. The wind changed a bit. But overall, I think we've been a little bit too far [away] this weekend.

“We've been chasing the balance every now and then. But I feel like we've done some good steps, which made me feel a little bit more comfortable. Margins are so small. I think to really find those things, I needed the progression, and I didn't have that progression through the weekend.

"So we'll work on that, and hopefully tomorrow we'll have a good race car. We have to work a lot on that as well. So we've compromised a little bit qualifying for hopefully a good tyre degradation.”

Perez, who reached Q3 for the first time in four races after suffering consecutive Q1 eliminations in Monaco and Canada, added: “I think we explored the car a lot. I think we struggled a lot more than we anticipated in Barcelona.

“Obviously the correlation sometimes can be good, sometimes not. I think tyre issues have been also a bit of a handout. So it's been quite hard to pick up a direction over the weekend, but I think we're just getting there.

“Hopefully tomorrow we are able to show some good race pace and turn the page quickly.”

Asked if he made a lot of changes to his car after Friday practice, Perez replied: “Yeah, we've been exploring the car quite a lot. A little bit too much.”

And Perez admitted he has “some work to do” to close the significant gap to teammate Verstappen.

“I think here it's been much more of a struggle than last year,” he said. “Because last year it was down to the conditions. It was damp and I went out in Q2.

“I think here it was more of a balance limitation that I struggled with. The gap to Max has been a little bit too far on the weekend. So we've got some work to do in that regard.”