Sergio Perez felt vindicated after ending a string of poor results in qualifying by claiming his first front row start for nine rounds at Spa.
The Red Bull driver qualified third on the grid but was promoted to the front row as team mate Max Verstappen has a 10-place penalty for a power unit change.
Perez said the result came after he made significant changes to his car during practice. “We tried a lot of things,” he said. “We kept throwing things at it, and it’s never ideal when you don’t have progression.
“Once again, today we threw at it a lot of things. I think we found a nicer window, a little bit similar in the direction of Hungary. But we were a lot happier with the car.”
He dropped out in Q1 at the previous two rounds after making mistakes in qualifying, and came within three thousandths of a second of failing to reach Q3 today. Perez said the result shows what he can do when he feels fully confident in his car.
“It’s not like I forgot how to drive from five, six races ago,” he said. “It’s just that – you see it with a lot of drivers – sometimes you’re not able to maximise the full potential of your car and for that reason you end up lacking that confidence to extract the maximum out of the car you have.”
Although he suffered setbacks in qualifying at the previous rounds, in Hungary he rose from 16th on the grid to finish seventh. He said there have been signs of progress in recent races.
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“We’ve been taking good step forwards in the right direction since Hungary,” said Perez. “I think Silverstone was already quite good, I had a really good Friday.
“The car is going in the right direction for now and hopefully tomorrow we are able to finish it off with a strong result. And still, there is a long way to go in the season.”
Despite signing a contract extension earlier this year, Perez’s future at Red Bull was cast in doubt when team principal Christian Horner described his poor scoring rate as “unsustainable” after the British Grand Prix. However Perez said today’s result “doesn’t change anything” regarding his situation in the team.
“I’ve always said it’s not where we are now, it’s how you ride the waves and where we finish in Abu Dhabi. There are a lot of drivers that haven’t been able to maximise their performance lately, but obviously the scrutiny on my side has been quite a bit higher.
“It doesn’t change anything from…
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