Sergio Perez admits Racing Point may face a "painful" Sunday for the championship aspirations at the Eifel Grand Prix.
The Silverstone-based outfit is currently embroiled in a titanic tussle with McLaren and Renault for third place in the Constructors' standings, with just seven points covering them heading to the Nurburgring.
However, qualifying saw Racing Point's weekend take a sharp downward turn as Nico Hulkenberg was forced to dash to the track after Lance Stroll withdrew with what the team call a flu-like illness, though the Canadian has continually tested negative for Covid-19.
“It all changed very quickly with Lance not coming in this morning, I could see some stress in the team," Perez commented.
"I didn’t really know what was happening, I hope health-wise Lance is okay and we can have him back soon.
“For Nico as well it was tough to jump straight into qualifying so yeah it isn’t looking great for tomorrow having both Renaults there, the Ferrari, it can be a painful day in the championship tomorrow.”
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With zero preparation, Hulkenberg was unable to avoid finishing slowest overall, albeit only two-tenths off 19th, while Perez rued a bad gamble which left his session compromised.
“Yeah I think we should definitely be higher up, we messed up a bit with our strategy," he explained after claiming P8.
"We thought we had a bit more pace and we tried the medium in Q1 which meant we lost basically a set for Q3, we only had one set in Q3 and I reckon the track changed a lot in that final run, the wind picked up a lot, the balance was pretty bad and unfortunately I only had one set.
“I went through on a single set of softs so we could run a bit better in that regard but this conditions whenever it is windy it can hurt us quite a bit.”
