Both Sergio Perez and Force India accepted a portion of the blame for the Mexican’s excruciating early exit in qualifying for the Italian GP.
Anticipating a strong fight to lead the midfield, Perez was caught the wrong side of a very close battle to make it through to Q2, finishing 16th by just 0.001s at Monza.
What made it worse was that result sat squarely on the shoulders of the team as they sat in the garage expecting his initial lap time to be good enough.
“I am very disappointed to go out in Q1,” the Mexican driver admitted. “It’s very hard to digest. We thought we were safe but we underestimated how much the track would evolve in just a few minutes.
“It’s frustrating because we had so much potential to be right behind the top three teams this weekend and instead we are out after just one run.”
Checo did admit he had a part to play in his own demise after making an error on his one and only timed lap.
“We were only two tenths behind Esteban [Ocon] in P7, but with such a close field the margins are very small and we lost out by one-thousandth of a second,” he continued.
“We have to admit we made a mistake as a team. The call not to go out was wrong, but I also should have done a better lap during my first run. I lost some time and that left us vulnerable.”
A further 0.001s behind him was Charles Leclerc, another surprise casualty in the first part of the qualifying as both Sauber’s endured their worst session in some time.
“One thing is for sure I had absolutely nobody in front of me for any slipstreams,” said the Monegasque, “But again that doesn’t justify our lack of performance today.
“For now we still need to analyse obviously, still quite fresh, we need to analyse what was wrong. There was definitely something because Monza should be a track where we are strong.
“So to see us out in Q1 after in my opinion a very good lap because I was very happy about my lap.”
