Perez apportions blame for fifth straight early Qualifying exit

Sergio Perez blamed the red flag for another shock early exit from British Grand Prix qualifying.

A Red Flag came out for Kevin Magnussen with three minutes until the end of the session, by which stage Perez had changed onto a new set of Soft tyres and was sat at pit exit.

With the red light still on, the Mexican waited for nine minutes before the session restarted which cooled his tyres and made his out-lap difficult in the greasy track conditions.

Perez produced a lap that was a second slower than the best time from Lando Norris in Q1, which caused him to tumble down the order and out of qualifying in P16.

Speaking to media, including RacingNews365.com, he blamed the poor lap on the conditions after the red flag: "The red flag lasted a lot longer than we initially thought, so we ended up waiting a lot longer and that was a bit unfortunate.

"These conditions are where I struggle the most. The changeable conditions are something that we need to get on top of when we are able to do better."

Perez: Another race to minimise damage

It is the fifth straight start outside of the top ten for the Mexican, who be on another recovery mission to limit the amount of points lost to pole sitter Max Verstappen.

"Just a shame to lose out because we had a great Friday, the race pace was looking really good," he said.

"Starting from the back it's gonna be another race where we will try to minimise the damage."