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A heavy crash, a Q1 elimination and the prospect of a long, hard and potentially pointless Formula 1Hungarian Grand Prix from 16th on the grid might seem like the worst-case scenario for Sergio Perez.
Under pressure to perform in Hungary and Belgium to ensure he staves off the threat of being replaced over the August break, the blow isn’t as devastating as it might seem given the signs of very real improvement prior to the accident.
Red Bull, with a 71-point constructors' championship lead to protect, needs more points from Perez, who has scored only 15 across the last six weekends, And that desire is heightened by McLaren getting a 1-2 on the grid. But the result is only one measure of Perez's situation.
The other is performance and up until the moment he hit the wall, Perez’s underlying performance in Hungary was encouraging - as team-mate Max Verstappen was at pains to point out.
“It's just a shame for Checo that that happened in Q1 because I thought up until that point, actually he was having quite a decent weekend,” said Verstappen. “So he's very unfortunate. That's the only thing that I want to say about that."
PEREZ! 😵
— Formula 1 (@F1) July 20, 2024
Into the barrier and out of Q1 💥#F1 #HungarianGP pic.twitter.com/hGbvs0yxrI
Verstappen wasn’t just defending his team-mate. Perez’s called Friday practice “the most comfortable I have felt with the car at this stage of the weekend in a while” having set the fourth-fastest time in FP2, 0.224s off his team-mate.
Even with car-spec parity, that would be an acceptable deficit for Red Bull, but Verstappen had the advantage on that score. While the world championship leader had the new bodywork package, Perez isn’t – save for the modified front wing.
Perez also has the new floor introduced at Silverstone that originally only Verstappen ran. Therefore, given Verstappen’s verdict on the upgrades was that “for sure, they work,” that means Perez’s ultimate pace potential is fractionally lower. But what was most beneficial was that the new front wing and resulting stronger front end boosted Perez’s confidence and feel.
“The feeling with the car is improving, the understanding with it, so we are definitely making progress,” said Perez. “Yesterday was probably the best Friday of the season so there is light at the end of the tunnel. But we just have to come through it and hopefully tomorrow can be the day.”
Perez was only 13th fastest in FP3, with Red Bull the only team to spend significant time on the hard Pirellis with a focus on race preparation given both drivers used an extra set of softs on Friday.
The FP3 qualifying simulations were unspectacular for both, with Perez down in 13th and over half-a-second off Verstappen. But confidence was still high heading into qualifying.
Despite rain ahead of qualifying, slicks were used from the start and Perez embarked on a run in which the team initially expected him to get only one lap.
That prediction proved partially accurate as having put in a good first attempt – one that stood as his fastest of qualifying – he then rolled round on a cooldown lap before making another attempt. That was stymied by rain that made the final sector tricky. He backed off, completed another cooldown lap then attempted a third push lap.
Approaching the Turn 8 left-hander, Perez took a little too much of the damp entry kerb. That lack of grip meant that when he turned in he spun heavily into the barrier.
While Perez did appear to use fractionally more of the kerb on the right side at entry than the previous lap, it was only by a small margin. He also hadn’t been warned of the moment Mercedes George Russell had at the same corner just over a minute-and-a-half earlier.
“I lost it,” said Perez, who also confirmed he is suffering from some pain in his leg as a result of the impact. “I clipped the kerb and at that point it was raining harder at Turn 8, so it was quite late in the corner and it just sent me off completely into the wall.”
In itself, that’s not so unusual an accident in tricky conditions, but the fact it happened to one fighting hard to hang onto their seat confers extra significance.
But there were mitigating factors, including the fact that with the conditions worsening and Perez was at that point classified ninth and therefore comfortably clear of the cutoff perhaps meant it would have been more sensible to have pitted before the third attempt. Hindsight, of course, being 20-20.
Put to him after the session that such an accident is “something you don’t need at the moment”, Perez agreed with an emphatic “yes, exactly”. But he wasn’t too downbeat given the circumstances – in fact, he was a surprisingly calm and upbeat figure when talking about the qualifying disaster compared to similar moments in recent races where he’s seemed lost.
“It’s something that was so hard to judge the conditions,” said Perez. “It was raining harder but at the end you were not losing grip. I was improving my lap, so in hindsight when you look at it we were safe, we didn’t need to do that lap.
“It hurts that it happened again, especially in the run that I am going through. But I’m determined to turn this around. Yesterday, we had a really good day, a very promising day, so I think we had very good information on the long runs so hopefully we can have some really good pace to come through the field and hopefully score some points.”
The reference to it happening again is to the fact he beached his car in the gravel at Copse after losing it on his outlap two weeks ago at Silverstone. As he put it, “unfortunately it has been two in a row”. He admitted it’s difficult to face the media after this, but also that “after all these difficult moments, when we get back to it will be even sweeter”.
In different circumstances, that would sound delusional. There’s no world in which shunting in Q1 is not a bad thing and that will count against him, but first and foremost Red Bull is focused on the underlying performance and there were genuine potential green shoots of recovery.
Perez knows what’s at stake and won’t have needed Red Bull Motorsport advisor Helmut Marko’s reminder that the driver line-up will be reviewed in the August break.
He needs to raise his game, and fast, but can at least hang onto the idea that had Hungaroring qualifying been a straightforward, dry session then there’s every chance he could have reached Q3 comfortably then put in a lap within the acceptable range of Verstappen.
“I think we just need a clean weekend, clean conditions, not this variability, just to get the most out of it,” said Perez. That’s the main thing.
“I was back in the factory [before this weekend] to try and understand [how] to get us in a better window with the car set-up. We definitely made some good progress, so we will keep pushing hard to turn things around.”
This is why a day that might superficially have the potential to ensure the decision goes against him in August isn’t as final as it might look. Drivers always grasp for ‘the positives’ even at times when there aren’t any, but for Perez there’s genuine hope.
In itself, it isn't enough, but he can at least aspire to have a decent race and perhaps make his way through the traffic to score points and then nail it next weekend at Spa to prove the apparent progress here is real. He knows, more than anyone, the consequences for failing to do so.
“I will really give my very best to turn this situation around and push as much as possible to get the constructors’ [championship] home,” he said. And that in itself shows he fully understands what this is all about – making sure he is able to score the points needed to get Red Bull over the line with the growing threat of McLaren, which while still third in the standings behind Ferrari is now within 78 points of the top.
The harsh reality of the situation is encouraging but unfulfilled signs in free practice won’t be sufficient to shore up his position and Red Bull desperately needs Perez to up his game.
But it is something tangible for Perez to build on after a six-race slump that offered precious little in the way of encouragement.
