Perez hits another low after qualifying ‘mess’

Sergio Perez admitted he is “not going through a great moment” after he failed to make the top 10 in qualifying for the third race in a row at the Canadian Grand Prix.

Perez is Max Verstappen’s closest rival in this year’s driver’s championship, but has dropped 57 points to his Red Bull teammate at the last three races.

In Canada, Perez qualified 12th after getting caught on the wrong tyres at the wrong moment in Q2, while Verstappen cruised to his third straight pole position.

“Definitely not feeling great, not going through a great moment,” Perez told reporters in Montreal. “But we’ve come back before and tomorrow it’s a new opportunity to hopefully get back into very strong points.”

The track was briefly dry enough for slick tyres at the start of Q2 on Saturday, but rain had started to fall again by the time Perez switched away from intermediates to a set of slicks.

That left him off the pace of those who made a tyre change before him and unable to compete for a top-10 position in the worsening conditions.

“I think today, what happened, it was just a mess really” he said. “I think being half a lap earlier here and there the picture would have looked a lot different, and yesterday we had a good day, so we just have to keep our heads down and it’ll come to us.

“It was basically half a lap too late and track position was really poor with the Alfa Romeo ahead, and once the tyres were up to temperature on the slick it started raining harder so we decided to box, and then on the intermediates [again] it was all a bit too late.”

Asked if he had requested a switch to the slicks earlier, Perez said: “No, we took the decision together and we got it wrong.

“But it was literally a gamble, I think we were missing 4-5 tenths and it was all down to the track.”