It wasn’t the best day for Sergio Perez in Zandvoort. While his teammate leads the grid for Sunday’s race, Perez falls behind at P16. the unlikely sight of a Red Bull failing to make it out of Q1 was embarrassing for the team and the driver. As a result, soon fingers were pointed.

The result disappointed Sergio Perez who thought the car was at its best on the circuit. “We were making very good progress and I think we had a big potential for today. I think we misjudged a couple of things.” However, Czech proceeds to list out what went wrong on the team’s part.

“We were probably carrying a bit too much fuel for the start of Q1. Our cut-off was less safe than we thought.” The pit lane traffic didn’t help the driver. Piling on, communication between the driver and his race engineer was murky.

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Perez exited his garage behind a long line of cars for the final runs before the checkered flag; this cost him time. The team radioed him to “push on a bit”  after the wasted time in the pit lane. Nonetheless, Checo’s out-lap was slow. Heading to the final sector, the track ahead of him was free from traffic. Hugh Bird then told his driver, “you need to push Checo, push on a bit now.”

Sergio Perez approached the final chicane slowly; Upon clearing the chicane Perez caught the sight of a car ahead of him at the apex of the penultimate corner. This caused the Mexican to hesitate for a moment, slowing down once again. All this added up to Perez’s misfortune as the checkered flag was waved, robbing Checo of the final attempt to better his numbers.

Christian Horner upset with Sergio Perez

While Perez listed the reasons for his disappointing qualifying session, it dismayed Christian Horner. “I think his out-lap was just that little bit slow, so frustrating because obviously, we shouldn’t have a car out in Q1 … Unfortunately, he’s missed it by about a second, so [that’s] very frustrating.”

Horner understood the situation as well, however, he believed that Perez’s pace too cost him the Q2 appearance. “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 [was needed]. He had enough space to start that lap.”

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Accurately describing the session as “a massive blow,” Perez looks to push through the crowd ahead of him on Sunday. Having recently extended his contract with Red Bull, Checo may want to try his best to impress at the Dutch GP on Sunday.

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