Perez says his confidence is returning because he “stopped inventing”

Sergio Perez says he is performing better this year because he is making fewer changes to his car which has allowed his confidence to grow.

He qualified inside the top two for tomorrow’s Japanese Grand Prix, the first time he has done so since the Miami Grand Prix in May almost a year ago. Perez endured a series of poor qualifying performance after that and failed to reach Q3 on nine occasions across 2023.

However he has started the new season more strongly and qualified within a tenth of a second of team mate Max Verstappen today. Asked in today’s FIA press conference what is behind his improvement, Perez said: “Like Carlos [Sainz Jnr] would say, we stopped inventing.

“We were playing around with the car far too much and just going through it and I think now we have a much better base,” he explained. “We are a lot happier and the weekends just progress.”

Perez endured one of his worst weekends of the season at this race six months ago. He qualified almost eight-tenths of a second behind Verstappen, then was involved in two collisions during the race and retired with damage.

“When we came here last year we were at the stage of our season where anything was working,” he said. “When you are in that, you just go around circles and circles.

“Then we found out in the end, towards the end of the year, that it was better [to] just step back and don’t try to chase it too much with the set-up because then you start compromising other things.

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“I think that’s been the case for this year. So I’m a lot more comfortable, a lot more happier and the confidence is slowly coming back.”

Perez was one of few drivers to improve their lap times at the end of qualifying. He said “everything was on the margin” in the session.

“It was so easy to lose a tenth or two just by over-pushing a little bit in some of the corners. The amount of energy that we put into the tyres around here, it’s quite high, so it was quite difficult just to get the perfect lap nailed.

“It was close today, but I think the whole weekend has been good. We’ve made some good progress. We managed to keep that consistency through the qualifying. Now let’s see what we are able to do tomorrow.”

Perez’s radio at the end of Q3

Perez’s race engineer Hugo Bird congratulated him on completing Red Bull’s first front row lock-out since last year’s Bahrain Grand Prix, which appeared to be the subject of a bet between the driver and team principal Christian Horner:

Bird	Watch out for Russell, delta on.
Bird	Okay, no more threats. 28.1 for Max, you’re seven-hundredths off him. Delta on.
Bird	Just getting the last few lap times in.
Perez	How’s it looking?
Bird	I think you need to have a word with Christian.
Horner	It’s looking expensive for the moment, mate.
Perez	I hope you’ve got the cash on you, mate.
Bird	Just got the Mercs finishing.
Bird	Just Russell to go. Watch your delta.
Bird	Okay, Max P1, you’re P2, Norris P3, Sainz, Fernando, Piastri, Hamilton, Leclerc, Russell, Tsunoda. Seven-hundredths.
Perez	Ah, it was close mate. Good job though. Well done guys.
Horner	Well done Checo. You’ve cost me a few today. Great job.
Perez	Now you see how to motivate.
Horner	Haha. Yep, I’ve always known that.
Bird	Very nice if you to share that with me.
Perez	Absolutely. And all the boys.

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