Sergio Perez was clearly feeling a mixture of emotions after he narrowly missed out on pole position for the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix to Sir Lewis Hamilton.
The Mexican will line up P2 on the grid, one position ahead of his Red Bull team-mate Max Verstappen, and he was evidently frustrated but optimistic with the outcome of qualifying.
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“Okay mate, P2, P2, Hamilton did a ’14:4, yourself a ’14:4, you were three hundredths off and Max…” Perez’s race engineer said, before the Mexican interrupted him and said:
“F***, okay, good improvement guys. We’ll get them tomorrow.”
Speaking after qualifying, Perez said he should have been on pole but stressed that the points are scored on Sunday.
“I should have been on pole today; I did a mistake on my final corner,” Perez said, as quoted by Formula1.com.
“I think it’s everything positive. We just have to make sure that we keep progressing – tomorrow is what matters.”
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Continuing, he said: “Yesterday I made a mistake and made them work hard during the day so it’s a good recovery.
“The most important thing is that we show progress. I never expected to be here today, you know [considering] where we were yesterday. We’ve been improving but it’s just important to be P2.”
Despite Hamilton securing pole, Red Bull are still in a great position to take victory at Imola today, as Perez and Verstappen are right behind him, while Valtteri Bottas will start the race down in P8.
This gives Red Bull the option of running different strategies – and it should be noted that Perez will be starting the grand prix on a different tyre compound to Hamilton and Verstappen as he used a set of soft-compound tyres in Q2.
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