Perez, who recently renewed his contract with Red Bull for two more years, faced another setback in qualifying for the Canadian Grand Prix. Similar to his performance in Monaco two weeks ago, he only managed to qualify in 16th place this time.
This isn’t the first time Perez has struggled in qualifying. Last season, around the middle of the year, his Saturday performances started to decline, and it all began around the Miami Grand Prix.
According to Marko, a top official at Red Bull, Perez’s problems are not because of the car. He believes it’s more about Perez’s state of mind. Marko mentioned that Perez finds it challenging to perform well when track conditions change during races.
“It’s not the car, you can see that with Max. I think it’s more psychological,” Marko said on ServusTV. “It was close, and when the conditions change, he finds it much more difficult. But the fact that it’s already the third time (not in Q3) is painful.”
During the Canadian Grand Prix qualifying session, Perez was on the verge of making it to Q2 but ended up falling into the drop zone in the final moments when Alex Albon set a faster lap.
Perez admitted that his struggles in qualifying were due to not feeling comfortable with the rear end of his RB20, especially in the changing track conditions. However, he remained optimistic about his chances in the race and aimed to secure some points.
“It was a massive frustration. It was a session where everything reset with the weather. We just couldn’t get everything to work, especially the rear axle. I think it was a very strange session for a lot of cars out there,” Perez said.
“We did struggle quite a lot with the rear end, so I think we got to understand what the reason behind it was. I think the track being so green it really reset things up but I was struggling to put the temperature into the tyre and I think that was the main struggle.”
“We’ve got some bits to understand tomorrow and we are able to secure a couple of points, that will be a good result and then really just go from there.”
