Red Bull needs to fix a brake balance issue that Sergio Perez says was the cause of his off in qualifying for the Australian Grand Prix.
Perez had a torrid time in final practice on Saturday, running off track on four occasions and complaining about an issue, before duly getting stuck in the gravel at Turn 3 on his first flying lap of Q1. Without a time to his name in qualifying he will line-up 20th on the grid, and Perez says Red Bull has work to do to fix his car’s gremlins.
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“We had a bit of a technical issue already from FP3 and we thought we’d fixed that, but we obviously didn’t and it was really difficult,” Perez said. “Very difficult to do anything out there, just braking I became a passenger as soon as I touched the brakes. It’s something that is moving the brake balance quite far forwards under braking and I just hope we are able to fix it as a team tomorrow and be able to race and minimize the damage.”
And Perez admits the car isn’t in a competitive state to race if the problem isn’t resolved overnight.
“It was just changing the brake balance quite far forwards as soon as I was braking, so a really difficult one.
“No (you can’t drive the car like that), that’s why it will be very important to fix it for tomorrow … I trust totally my team that we will be able to overcome this problem and be able to have a strong race pace.”
The Mexican is one point behind team-mate Max Verstappen in the early championship standings but says the incident shows how hard Red Bull is pushing to have the advantage it has enjoyed so far this year.
“It shows the margins already in qualifying how close everyone is. If we are not able to put it all together every single Saturday and Sunday the competition is very strong.”