Christian Horner explained that, in hindsight, Red Bull was fortunate to get Sergio Perez Q1 in qualifying for the Chinese GP.
Sergio Perez took second on the grid at the Chinese Grand Prix, making him the exclusively Red Bull front row at Shanghai, finishing 0. 322sec behind team-mate Max Verstappen.
But Perez’s day almost came to an end at the start of qualifying, with the Mexican driver managing to make it through Q1 finishing only 15th and just 0. 048 off the elimination zone.
The Mexican driver finished just one stint in Q1, after starting on soft tyres at the start of qualifying and then cutting short his first flying lap. Retesting on the same tyres, Perez’s lone time of 1:35. 547 first put him in sixth position, only to drop back to 15th when others stepped up due to the conversion track.
Speaking after the session, Red Bull boss Christian Horner admitted that the team was lucky to get the Mexican driver into Q1.
“Well, the track was moving temporarily and I think, in hindsight, we’ve probably used some other set of tyres,” he told Sky F1.
“But we were piling them up for later in qualifying. The track was getting stronger, it seemed like it was the best judgement, but we had a bit of luck to make sure we were within the limits. “
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After overcoming the ordeal and completing the moment on the grid, Perez explained the classification from his own after getting the Red Bull one-two.
“It was very intense,” he said in post-qualifying interviews.
“I almost got knocked out in Q1, I had traffic with one of the Williams, I had to impede my lap, I came back, ran on hot used tyres and just passed, P15.
“It was a very difficult start to qualifying. And then the second quarter was a little bit simpler, I was able to get a feel for the scale.
“We made smart advances in the session.
Unfortunately, in the end, it wasn’t enough to get Max but overall it’s a wonderful result for the team because the track has changed a lot. We’ve also modified the car a lot to suit the conditions, so hopefully that will pay off as well.
After scoring a podium finish in the Sprint race, Perez said he hoped to continue his strong weekend on Sunday.
“I think that’s all we want to play [Sunday],” he said.
“We can fight from there. In fact, we can have great speed. Today we showed that we have quite clever speed on the long runs, so I’m ahead for tomorrow. “
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