F1 | Red Bull, Perez: “I could have taken pole position”

Great day for Sergio Perez, who even tasted pole position for a moment at COTA, but Verstappen and Hamilton had a slightly better pace than the Mexican from Red Bull, who however managed to stay ahead of Bottas on the track, without taking advantage of of his penalty, earning a well-deserved third place. The good Checo risked being thrown out in Q2, given that in the first attempt he exceeded the track limits, therefore time was cancelled, while in the second and last lap of the session he was unable to go beyond seventh place. Beyond this, a positive weekend so far for the former Sauber.

“I'm happy, but I can't be 100% satisfied because I had the pace to take pole – Perez admitted. It's a shame, but it started raining heavily on the last lap and I lost time in the third sector, so we were a bit unlucky in that respect. It was very tight at the end, we knew it would be a matter of thousandths and both Max and Lewis did a fantastic job, I think that in the end the result is the right one and that we deserve, each of us. I am gaining more and more confidence this weekend because we are very competitive and it shows how hard we have worked to make this kind of progress, I expect to improve further. We are in a good starting position for tomorrow and it will be a long race, where anything can happen. There are a lot of fans from Mexico and I hope I can put on a good performance for them too."