Sergio Perez has revealed he struggled with a shoulder problem during Spanish Grand Prix qualifying but does not know what caused it.
Perez will start Sunday’s race down in eighth, six places down on Red Bull team-mate Max Verstappen, after enduring a difficult qualifying session in which he was slower than someone from a midfield team in every segment.
He had a spin on his first run in Q3 before lapping almost a second off the pace on his second run, and after qualifying said he had felt an issue with his left shoulder in Q1 that he said got worse as qualifying progressed.
“Yeah, I did struggle, I didn’t feel 100% with myself today,” said Perez when asked by The Race about a qualifying session he lacked performance in compared to Verstappen throughout.
“I had a bit of an issue with my shoulder through qualifying and I was just feeling bad all the way through it.
“But I’ve spoken to the team, we’ll review everything and we should be back to 100% tomorrow.”
Perez said it was “a bit” painful but should not be a “big factor” in the race, though he was still unsure what caused it when he spoke with media shortly after qualifying.
“I don’t think it’s something I’ve done,” he said when asked about the nature of the discomfort.
“We don’t know 100% what it is but we’re pretty confident that we can back to form for tomorrow.”
Perez was knocked out in Q2 on his Red Bull debut but called this the “toughest qualifying” he has had this year, saying that “not feeling 100% physically was a big limitation”.
He had already entered qualifying on the backfoot after a difficult final practice session that Verstappen had gone quickest in.
“It was just a bad day, I didn’t get a good lap throughout the day,” said Perez.
“Q1 was looking all right, man, but we just didn’t make any progress after that.
“I wasn’t 100%, so it was very hard to get the best out of the car in qualifying.”
Perez said Sunday’s race is now a matter of minimising the damage, as he is unlikely to become a factor in the lead battle and help Verstappen fight for the win.
But he expects this performance to be a “one-off” and become nothing more than a “bad memory”.
“I’ll be aggressive as I need to be to make my race a faster race,” he said.
“But I think the pace should be there and we should be able to come through the field and hopefully go with the leaders at an early point in the race.”
