Sergio Perez exited SQ1 for the fourth time in six Sprint events this season after struggling for pace over his lap, beginning with running wide of the apex in turns 1 and 2 and ending with over 7 tenths to the benchmark of his teammate Max Verstappen’s SQ1 lap.

Speaking after the session, Perez said it came down to leaving the garage late after suffering an issue with one of his anti-roll bars. This appeared to compromise his tyre warmup on his earlier laps in the session, meaning he was running wide of the apex particularly into turns 1 and 2 and complained of struggles with the front end at the apex on the radio.

This issue likely plagued his final SQ1 run too as sitting in a queue at the final corner before opening his lap saw his prep-lap time rise to 2:24.088, whereas it had been 2:02.813 previously. Sainz and Alonso went around Perez in the queue, but as he was coming around T16 Leclerc pushed at the same time and they battled into turn 1, once again compromising Perez’s apex and mid-corner speed.

Compared to his previous lap time, he’s down 0.164s in time and 3km/h in speed. But comparing Perez’s final SQ1 run to Verstappen’s shows that this loss to his teammate’s benchmark is at over 3 tenths after just one corner.

Warming his tyres enough was up to Perez to control, however it seems the team’s management of the strategy with traffic and timing, particularly on his final lap, was amiss too, which also would have cost him temperature.

Starting behind the Haas of Kevin Magnussen but ahead of the Visa Cash App RB of Yuki Tsunoda leaves Perez with a significant amount of the field to push through over just 19 laps. He feels this will be a “very difficult” task, and as such has already shifted his focus to the rest of the weekend’s running.