Perez insists pressure ‘has nothing to do’ with poor form after P19 qualifying

Sergio Perez insists pressure is not playing a part in his ongoing poor form after spinning out of qualifying and starting on the back row at the British Grand Prix.

Pierre Gasly’s power unit penalty is the only reason Perez is not starting last at Silverstone after he spun off at Copse on slick tires on a drying track in Q1. Perez lines up 19th and has scored just 15 points across the past five rounds -- including sprint races -- but says he is not feeling extra pressure despite team principal Christian Horner having called for more from his driver.

“No, no no no -- that has nothing to do with it,” Perez said. “I’m fully focused on my job, I’m fully focused on getting the performance out of myself. I know where I can be, yesterday we had a very positive day, things were looking in the right direction. So head down and it’s a matter of time before we turn around the situation.

“I’m fully committed to the team, I’m fully committed to my career. I have a contract with the team and I will turn things around. It’s not something that distracts me or anything like that, it’s something that … I want to get back to my form and focus on important things.”

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Explaining the incident that ended his qualifying session prematurely, Perez says he felt he was unlucky due to the conditions on his out lap on slick tires.

“Turn 9 was tricky, really difficult, especially in the beginning," he said. "As I was trying to warm up the tires going into Turn 9, when I downshifted I basically lost the rear end quite badly and I went out of the track. And cold tires and it was completely soaked of water outside of the track, so I just ended up going in the gravel, couldn’t stop the car, couldn’t go straight… A very unfortunate incident.

“It seemed to be quite wet on the entry and on the white line it was quite slippery; unfortunately I was the first one probably to go through on cold tires, slick tires, so everything combined was the result. I think people probably went out 20 minutes after and still it was a tricky corner,” but anyway, I put my hand up because I f****d up today, and tomorrow is a new day.”

Perez starts 19th and is confident he can climb through the field but says it will not be a decisive result even if he doesn’t make it back into the points.

“I think the weekend has been very strong up to now. Let’s take the positives," he said. "Tomorrow will be a long, difficult race; if I’m able to score some good points, good on that, but it’s a long year, I’ve been in this business for long enough so I know exactly what to do and how to turn things around, and I will not give up, I will turn this one around.

“It’s going to be tough battles, especially to come through the field, with a very tight field as it is now, but we’ll see, we’ll give it our very best tomorrow.”