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Formula 1 drivers rarely enjoy speaking to the media after a poor session or bad race but Sergio Perez looked particularly forlorn after becoming the first-ever sprint qualifying victim – and he’ll now start Sunday’s British Grand Prix from the pitlane.
Perez’s spin early in the 17-lap Saturday race means one of the four fastest cars will start the grand prix at the back. It was exactly the sort of jeopardy that inserting a sprint race between qualifying and the main event was meant to create.
It wasn't @SChecoPerez's day in the first ever F1 Sprint at Silverstone 🔄 😵#BritishGP 🇬🇧 #F1 pic.twitter.com/25MRrsC9VK
— Formula 1 (@F1) July 17, 2021
“I was getting out of the corner, already picking quite a lot of throttle, and I think I got caught out with the dirty air,” was Perez’s muted explanation for his lap five spin out of Becketts.
“And I became a passenger basically pretty early in the corner. A poor day from my side.”
Perez had already lost ground at this point. Having qualified fifth, nearly seven tenths of a second slower than team-mate Max Verstappen and even behind the Ferrari of Charles Leclerc, he slipped behind Lando Norris’s McLaren at the race start.
So, it would already have been frustrating for a driver struggling to match Verstappen over one lap but faring quite respectably in race trim to have gone backwards at the start of the sprint race.
In theory, having an extra one-third of a race distance should have helped Perez, and put him where he needs to be at the start of the grand prix. Instead, he was the biggest loser of the new format.
“It’s a low point for me,” Perez admitted.
With flat-spotted tyres and no incentive to continue, the team opted to retire him from sprint qualifying.
Perez will start the grand prix from the pitlane after Red Bull made several changes to his car after the sprint race to assist his charge through the order.
A new rear wing assembly – presumably to a lower-drag specification – plus suspension changes and front brake cooling adjustments have been confirmed by the FIA technical delegate.
Honda has also taken the opportunity to give Perez a third control electronics and energy store, which exceeds his seasonal allocation but given he has to start from the pitlane anyway, it is a no-brainer and adds an extra set of those components to his pool for the rest of the season.
But given how inconsolable Perez seemed on Saturday, that was probably the least of his concerns.
“It’s hard after days like today,” Perez admitted. “But [Sunday] is a new day and a new opportunity to figure out what we are able to do better.”
His best bet of anything meaningful is if the race throws up a safety car. After being caught out by a revolutionary new format, Perez could rather do without a conventional grand prix.
But if that’s what he gets, he needs to have an error-free and rather dull run through the field.
There’s a major exercise in damage limitation coming up, especially if he is to help protect Red Bull’s 44-point constructors’ championship lead.
