Liam Lawson revealed that it was "frustrating" to be eliminated in Q2 having felt like his car was strong, highlighting that the team "chased" performance too much.
Both Lawson and Isack Hadjar have shown good pace at the Mexico City Grand Prix; however, only the latter managed to progress to Q3.
Lawson aborted his first lap in Q2 before setting an uncompetitive lap time to end up 15th on the grid, with used tyres having been run at the end of the second part of qualifying.
Speaking after his disappointing qualifying, the Racing Bulls driver revealed that the squad made the mistake of going "too far" in its efforts to find more performance.
"Yeah, we struggled on the on the new tyre in Q2," Lawson told select media including RacingNews365. "We basically tried to keep improving the car, and I think we just went a little bit too far.
"So yeah, it's frustrating, because we had a very fast car. We just chased it a little bit too hard."
With the midfield being so tight, trying to extract as much performance as possible out of a car has become a necessity to score points.
However, at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, Racing Bulls ended up making its package more difficult to drive by trying to find more speed.
Asked if the team needed to chase performance, Lawson replied: "It's very close, so we're trying to, obviously, extract everything.
"And I made a mistake as well, which really didn't help on the first lap in Q2. So we only had one lap at the end, which basically was when we found out that [the car] was a little bit tricky to drive.
"So yeah, we aborted it. Decided to try a used tyre at the end, which just didn't work."
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