Praying for a safety car on Sunday? Perez tries to cool off in Singapore…
Red Bull Racing’s Sergio Perez was left stranded in 13th place on the grid for the Singapore GP after suffering with tyres and brake issues in Q2.
Meanwhile his team mate Ma Verstappen overcame a tricky RB20 to be second fastest in all three qualifying sessions.
On the back of a good performance in Azerbaijan prior to his crash Perez was hoping for more at another street track, especially at a time when there is much speculation about driver changes within the Red Bull camp.
There are strong suggestions that his RBR seat for is not fully secure for 2025, and that thanks to performance clauses the team still has the option to replace him with Liam Lawson as part of a shake-up that could see F2 star Isack Hadjar promoted to RB, and Daniel Ricciardo left on the sidelines.
Lawson is expected to race for RB for the remainder of 2024, and that stint can perhaps be seen as an extended audition for a future seat with the senior team.
Having both Lawson and Hadjar in race seats in 2025 would ensure that Red Bull has two young stars on hand should it need to find a successor to Max Verstappen in the coming years, although Christian Horner has also made it clear to Sky F1 that the company would look outside its pool, even naming George Russell as a potential target.
Perez was a respectable fifth in Q1 despite making a mistake, but he fell away in the second session as he struggled to find tyre temperature.
“Q1 was looking really nice and smooth,” he said. “I actually had a mistake on my lap into Turn 13, where I lost around two or three tenths.
“But I just went slower in Q2. I started sliding a lot more. I couldn’t get the tyre up the temperature. It was just a very, very tricky afternoon.
“In Q2 I had issues with the brakes and with the tyres. I think the brakes were running too hot, and I was lacking a lot of bite from them, and just the tyres were absolutely nowhere in that Q2. The two laps I did I had just no grip at all, and it was super tricky.”
Perez conceded that set-up adjustments for Saturday had not worked out: “We changed quite a bit the car. I think we probably went in the wrong direction.
“It’s not so clear at the moment, but we certainly were on a nicer window yesterday, and we just lost a lot of competitiveness.”
He added: “I think he’s just the tyres have been so peaky around here, the grip, the ride, and the track changing lap by lap. It is just a very tricky place.”
Perez is relying on strategy to get him up the order in Sunday’s race.
“It’s going to be a very difficult race,” he said. “Hopefully we can do some magic with the strategy and come through. That will be the key for us.”
Adam Cooper F1 