Sergio Perez was taken by surprise after he crashed at the end of qualifying and Carlos Sainz Jnr hit his stationary car.
The crash happened on Perez’s final flying lap of Q3. The Red Bull driver lost control of the rear of his car at Portier and hit the TecPro barrier with the rear of his car. That left his Red Bull broadside on the outside of the corner.
“I was quite close to my time, trying to make it up,” Perez explained. “Turn eight has been a difficult one for me throughout the qualifying session so I was trying to anticipate and get quite early on throttle.
“But as soon as I touched the throttle I could feel the rear tyre was not gripping in and I was playing with it a bit until I lost it.”
Perez car was sat for six seconds before it was hit by Sainz, the next driver behind him on the track. Yellow flashing lights were displayed to Sainz at the moment he began turning into the corner.
“I was actually surprised that Carlos hit me at the time,” said Perez. Sainz spun his Ferrari trying to avoid the Red Bull, but hit its front-right wheel with his rear-left.
“It’s just a shame what happened and I feel sorry for Carlos and for the rest of the guys, but this is Monaco,” Perez added.
Perez will start from third on the grid, one place behind Sainz, but believes he could have bettered his time. “It’s just a shame what happened because I think we had more pace than that.
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“But we just couldn’t challenge. The strategy with the tyres, especially that final set, it wasn’t up to temperature and it was just too peaky.
“I nearly lost it already into turn one and in hindsight I think we didn’t get it right today.”
He expects his car will be “okay for tomorrow” but admitted it was extensively damaged.
“Certainly it looked bad the from the rear and then we what made it worse was the hit we got from Carlos,” he said. “So we have…