Sergio Perez says he was “a passenger” as soon as he touched the brakes in Q1 as he suffered a dismal day in Australia.
Perez had several off-track excursions during the final practice session on Saturday afternoon amid brake struggles and they continued at the start of qualifying.
Perez locked up into Turn 3 and wound up in the gravel during the opening stages, eliminating him from proceedings.
It means he will start at the rear of the 20-car grid on Sunday.
“We had a bit of a technical issue already from FP3 and we thought we’d fixed that, but we obviously didn’t and it was really difficult,” said Perez.
“Very difficult to do anything out there, just braking I became a passenger as soon as I touched the brakes.
“ It’s something that is moving the brake balance quite far forwards under braking and I just hope we are able to fix it as a team tomorrow and be able to race and minimise the damage.”
Perez agreed that “it will be very important to fix it” for the race after agreeing that the RB19 would be undriveable without changes.
“I don’t want to go too much into detail but I am confident that we will be able to fix it as a team and hopefully minimize the damage tomorrow,” he said. “It’s going to be a difficult track to overtake.”
Team-mate Max Verstappen went on to take pole position.
