Sergio Pérez has had to face a difficult Saturday at the Chinese Grand Prix with the Cadillac team in a day marked by technical inconsistency and reliability problems, a situation that began on Friday when he was unable to take part in the sprint classification.
Pérez’s day was conditioned by a series of setbacks that prevented the real progress of the car from being shown. As the man from Guadalajara explained, the team’s strategy has focused on mitigating the car’s weaknesses on a circuit that severely punishes the tires.
“I think we are forcing the configuration quite a bit, especially for the race, to try to protect that left front tire that has suffered very severely on our car,” Pérez admitted.
A classification compromised by “deployment”
The qualifying session, far from being the stage for a comeback after a difficult Sprint, became a race against the clock. Checo Pérez revealed that operational execution failed at critical moments, leaving the number 11 car in a vulnerable position before even setting a competitive time, committing it from Q1.
“Unfortunately, qualifying was compromised; we arrived late, we lost a set of laps and then I had a problem with the power delivery that cost us a lot of time, so it was very unfortunate,” detailed the Mexican in the media area where Motorsport.com was.
Despite the failures, Pérez remains confident that the race pace could be higher than what was shown in a single fast lap: “I think there was much more potential in the car and I hope that tomorrow we can have a good race with the Astons (Martin) and give them a fight.”
Humor at the loss of parts
One of the most talked about moments on Saturday was the detachment of parts from the body of the Cadillac car during the sprint race. In the final part of the short competition, the rear parts of the Cadillac were shown on the international broadcast. A later image on social media showed that the entire right side had been destroyed.
When asked if there was contact with other vehicles; Pérez resorted to sarcasm to explain what happened. “We were looking to reduce resistance for the race,” Checo joked, and then regained seriousness: “Unfortunately it wasn’t like that; we’ll see, we’ll see tomorrow.”
However, the team still does not have clear answers about the origin of these structural failures. “No, we don’t know yet,” he responded bluntly when asked if they had found any loose screws.
“Obviously it is still the first days for the team, but we are learning with each passing day,” he reflected. “I hope that tomorrow we can finish the race with the full car.”
We want your opinion
What would you like to see on Motorsport.com?
Take our 5-minute survey.
– The Motorsport.com team
