Sergio Perez has held his hands up for the "mistake" that left Red Bull with a hefty repair job between the opening two practice sessions at the Hungarian Grand Prix. The Mexican is under increasing pressure after a dismal run of form - including five races in a row without a Q3 appearance - that has left him 99 points behind teammate Max Verstappen in F1's Drivers' standings. Daniel Ricciardo's rearrival onto the grid at AlphaTauri has further ramped the tension up, meaning his crash in the early stages of FP1 came at the worst time possible. Perez dipped a wheel onto the grass on the entry to Turn 5, spinning into the barriers and causing extensive damage to the suspension, front wing, floor and sidepod after only four minutes of running at the Hungaroring. His Red Bull mechanics were able to fix the damage in time for second practice and assessing the crash, Perez conceded: "It was just a mistake from my side. "But the guys have done a tremendous job to get the car together and get some running in FP2. "At least we got some good data to look through."
Good information
F1 and Pirelli are trialling an 'Alternative Tyre Allocation' this weekend, which sees only 11 tyre sets allowed per car rather than 13. All three compounds are mandatory for qualifying, with Hards in Q1, Mediums in Q2 and Softs in Q3, which led to a mixture of practice programmes in FP2. On his recovery, Perez said: "With the weekend format in terms of tyre usage, it will be very important to get a good balance through all compounds, because in qualifying we will be going through them all. "We got good information, we managed to run the Medium tyre as well, so some good info there."
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