The mistake in the last corner cost me Imola F1 pole

Perez recovered from a difficult Friday when he crashed against Esteban Ocon in FP1 and was able to compete with the leaders in FP2 with second place in Imola.

It was Perez’s best F1 qualifying result to date, beating his best starting position to date in third as he was just 0.035 seconds behind the lap time of pole sitter Lewis Hamilton.

But Perez believed he had the pace to snatch pole position from Red Bull in the final moments of qualifying after Hamilton failed to improve on his final lap.

“I should have been on pole today,” said Perez.

“I made a mistake in my last corner so I think everything is positive.

“We just have to make sure we keep moving forward and tomorrow it depends.”

Perez was pleased with how he managed to recover from Friday’s incident with Ocon and admitted that he was surprised by the turnaround over the weekend.

“I have to tell the team it’s done well,” said Perez. “Yesterday I made a mistake and got her to work hard during the day. So it’s a good rest.”

“But the most important thing is always to show progress. I never expected to be here today where we were yesterday. We improved, but it’s just important to be P2. “

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Perez will start the race on Sunday on the soft compound tire, which gives him a theoretical advantage over Hamilton and his team-mate Max Verstappen, who starts third in the opening stint.

“I think anything can happen tomorrow,” said Perez. “We have a different strategy than Lewis and Max, so it will be interesting to see what we can do.

“Most importantly [is to] Get these points, fight what is priority right now. “

Verstappen was just 0.087 seconds behind Hamilton’s benchmark, but had to ruin a bad final lap in the third quarter that cost him a possible front row seat and labeled him “not that good”.

“In the third quarter I started at Turn 3, so a bit chaotic, just not a good lap, but it can’t be good every time,” said Verstappen.

“We’ll see what went wrong, but it was definitely not the easiest thing to do. But still P3, which is a good starting position.

“It will be interesting because we have the two cars on different tires. Let’s see how that works.

“We’ll try to make it difficult [Mercedes]. “