Not the qualifying session Perez was hoping for today in Qatar. The Mexican couldn’t improve enough on the soft tyre in his final run in Q2 and sensationally missed out on Q3.

The pressure is at its highest level; the championship battle is very closed between Mercedes and Red Bull, and the work of both their drivers counts a lot now that the gap between the two teams is just eleven points.

The Mexican suffered with both Medium and Soft tyres and closed the quali session in P11, where he is going to start tomorrow race. From here is going to be very difficult, especially on a track like the Losail one, to help his team-mate Max Verstappen to beat the two Mercedes, which seems to be instead, very strong here.

Perez declared: “ I didn’t expect it to end like this. We struggled a lot. In Q2 we ended up following the others as there was a bit of traffic. I could not find the grip at the beginning and this made me use the tyres too much so that in the end they were completely gone.”

As the end of the season gets closer, and the championship is not closed yet, Perez work is going to be fundamental tomorrow, as the Milton Keynes team, dreams to take away the eighth trophy away from Mercedes’s hands.