Sergio Perez has lamented “chasing the balance” on his Red Bull car across the Formula 1 Spanish Grand Prix weekend as he qualified in a disappointing eighth place.
Perez entered the event striving to turn around the recent fortunes that had seen him fail to progress to Q3 at the previous three rounds and score a pitiful four points.
But while the Mexican was able to be present in the pole position shootout in Barcelona, Perez ended up over six tenths behind team-mate Max Verstappen in second.
Having also trailed behind both Ferraris, Mercedes and McLarens as well as Alpine’s Pierre Gasle, Perez rued a mistake on his last run stopping him from being higher.
“I think we were finding the light out of the tunnel,” Perez said. “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. We only had one single set, so that made things a little bit tricky. The wind changed a bit.”
However, Perez conceded that he has struggled to optimise the set-up on his RB20 car all weekend long and that meant he was unable to capitalise on track evolution.
“But overall, I think we’ve been a little bit too far this weekend,” he continued. “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’s decision to tailor his car towards a race-orientated set-up comes amid a three-place grid drop from Canada demoting him down to 11th position on the grid.
“I think we needed to be really good and strong in that regard,” he said regarding his car being geared towards ensuring he can overtake.
“So tomorrow is going to be a long afternoon. So hopefully we are able to clear the people ahead quickly and make progress early on in the race.”
Despite being reported to have spent time in Red Bull’s simulator, Perez cited the peakiness of the tyres as a reason it was hard to use that learning into the weekend.
“I think we explored the car a lot,” he explained. “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.”
Perez highlighted following the second practice session that drastic set-up changes had made his car worse, prompting him to proclaim he explored “a bit too much”.
“I think here it’s been much more of a struggle than last year,” he rued. “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.”
