The reasons behind Perez’s shock Q1 exit at F1’s Dutch Grand Prix

Perez was eliminated from qualifying after a slow out-lap in Q1 meant he failed to start his final flying lap.

The Mexican is expected to start from 16th on the grid, although there’s some suggestion that Red Bull will use this opportunity to take a fresh engine. 

Perez blamed track evolution in Q1 being greater than expected as well as traffic for his poor qualifying at Zandvoort.

“A bit too many things happened,” Perez said. “I think our cut-off wasn’t expecting this track evolution that we had in Q1. We probably carried a bit too much fuel for that first run then we were monitoring the lap times from other people then we realised that we were a bit of a mess and we didn’t manage to complete the lap.

“I think we missed out by a second and a half or something like that. It’s extremely frustrating as we definitely had the pace today to lock the front row. I think I was progressing well, I was feeling more comfortable as the run was progressing.

“It was just a massive blow for us. Tomorrow it’s going to be a very hard one but I look forward to try and score something, minimise the damage tomorrow.”

Perez revealed that he left the pit lane with two minutes on the clock so with a lap of Zandvoort just over a minute, he thought that he had enough time in hand.

“It was getting a bit messier with the cars that I had to let through,” he explained. “Probably I could have gone ab it earlier but I didn’t know how critical it was at the time.

“We left the garage with two minutes so we got plenty of time. People making the gap in the pit lane… so a lot of factors that putting them all together that we lost our lap.”

Team boss Christian Horner felt Perez’s out-lap was simply too slow.

“I think his out-lap was just that little bit slow, so frustrating because obviously, we shouldn’t have a car out in Q1,” Horner told Sky Sports F1.

“It’s such a short circuit but, you know, 20/20 vision, we should have sent him out a little earlier. But yeah, certainly a quicker out-lap. He had enough space to start that lap. Unfortunately, he’s missed it by about a second, very frustrating.”