Perez and Force India ‘screwed up’ qualifying

Sergio Perezwas the shock exit in Q1 on Saturday afternoon, calling it “really unlucky” that he could only manage P16.

The Mexican opted not to go out for a second run at the end of the first part of qualifying, instead relying on his first timed lap.

However, the track surface started coming to the drivers, and Perez slipped down to P16, just 0.001s behind Romain Grosjean’s cut-off time.

The driver believes that is was just a simple mess up from both himself, and theForce Indiateam, that caused the issue.

“We had a little miscalculation there with the tow effect and the track evolving,” Perez told Autosport.

“I was two-tenths from seventh, so the margin was really small.

“But at the same time I should have done a better lap, so we screwed up together.

“I hope that tomorrow we can minimise the damage and hopefully score some points.”

Perez also said that the team expected his team to be easily quick enough, and that they were confident of making it through to Q2.

“Everyone was very optimistic, I was and the team. And then I saw that things didn’t work out,” he continued.

“I mean we lost out by a millisecond, I was really unlucky.

“I was actually speaking with the team about what we can do better with the balance and so on, and I was looking at a lot of people going green, green, green.

After the new entrant team, Racing Point Force India, started with zero points in Spa last weekend, they were hoping to kick on in Monza.

Perez was key in giving the team 18 points on their “debut”, as such, but qualifying down in P16 for the Italian Grand Prix was not what they wanted.

“Today was a massive blow for myself and the team, given how strong the pace of the car was the whole weekend,” the Mexican added.

“We definitely had the pace to be best of the rest, and especially being in a good position for tomorrow.

“It hurts, it hurts a lot. It’s been a difficult afternoon, we have to try to digest everything and focus on tomorrow.

“That’s my target, get away and don’t think too much about what happened today.”

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