How Hamilton's impediment incident damaged Perez's F1 qualifying in the Netherlands – Motorsport Week

Lewis Hamilton's impediment to Sergio Perez during the first session of qualifying for the Formula 1 Dutch Grand Prix on Saturday proved to be a “costly one” for the Mexican in the Q3 top-10 shootout.

Hamilton received a three-place grid penalty for the incident. The Mercedes driver was too slow on the exit of Turn 9, which forced Perez to back off on a fast lap.

The aborted push lap forced Perez to use an additional set of soft tyres to get through Q1, leaving him with only one fresh set by the time of the top-10 shootout in Q3.

Perez eventually qualified in fifth place, four tenths behind his teammate Max Verstappen, who secured second place.

“I think it was the wrong time, the wrong moment,” Perez said of the incident in Hamilton.

“Lewis was on the racing line so there was nothing I could do except put another set on, which was very costly in Q3.

“I think our qualifying could have looked a little different with two sets [of tyres in Q3].”

With only a single strong push run in Q3 to secure his starting position, Perez noted: “You don’t want to mess it up,” and lamented: “The lap was not so clean, whereas with two laps you can attack a lot more than with the first lap. [lap].”

Perez entered the summer break in abysmal form, scoring just 28 points in eight races, paving the way for speculation about the security of his Red Bull seat.

Red Bull have given Perez the opportunity to rediscover his skills for the rest of the season, and team boss Christian Horner claimed that Zandvoort was an outlier amid a string of strong tracks for the Mexican driver (Monza, Baku and Singapore).

With this in mind, fifth place in qualifying was a positive result for Perez and he has had a good GP weekend in the Netherlands so far.

“I think at least from our side we have understood a lot of things with our car,” he said.

“So this is very promising. Now we can ramp up our upgrades in the coming races as we understand the package much better now. So this is the most promising result of the weekend.”

Confidence in his RB20 is crucial to Perez's progress and he said: “I think we are making the right progress with the right approach.”

“We have a long way to go [on Sunday.]”