Horner confused by Perez’s slow pit lane start in Sprint

Christian Horner has given his take on Sergio Perez’s difficult Sprint in Qatar, with the Red Bull boss admitting that he needs to speak with the Mexican to find out why he was overtaken by the Williams of Franco Colapinto as both drivers made a pit lane start.

After another tough outing during Friday’s Sprint Qualifying, Perez exited the session early in P16 before the team opted to make changes to his car under parc ferme conditions, meaning that he would start the Sprint from the pit lane.

However, with Colapinto lining up behind Perez after Williams also made parc ferme changes, the Argentinian drove around the Red Bull when the lights went green, with Perez seemingly slow to get away.

When asked during a post-Sprint chat with Sky Sports F1 about what had happened, Horner responded: “I don’t know, to be honest. I need to have a chat with him about it. It looked like he just misjudged it, but when the light goes out, you’re supposed to go.”

2024 Qatar GP Sprint: Colapinto slips past Perez at the start in the pit lane

Perez struggled to make ground from there onwards and later pitted for a new front wing. Horner confirmed that the squad had decided to use the session as a test of sorts, with the Team Principal commenting: “We got a bit of data out of it.

“There was no chance we were going to score any points, so we may as well use that session to get something out of it. So we changed the wing, we tried something a bit different, which gives us and the engineers some good information for the qualifying a little bit later.”

HIGHLIGHTS: Watch the action from the Qatar Sprint as Norris relinquishes win to Piastri

When asked about the pit lane start himself following the Sprint, Perez suggested that he had intended to find space on track.

“The main objective of today was to be as further back as possible to have as much clean air as possible – that was the objective,” the six-time race winner said. “I think we managed to understand the car with the changes we’ve done, I think there is some room to improve. What we have to do going forward, we have to try and bring a little bit more balance to the car.”

Perez reveals ‘main objective’ in the Sprint after pit lane issues and P20 finish

Team mate Max Verstappen, meanwhile, faced a tough start to the Sprint, having experienced some issues with his RB20 that saw him drop places during the first lap. While he managed to recover to score a point in P8, the world champion admitted that the problems could be tricky to solve ahead of qualifying and race day in Qatar.

“Lap 1 was pretty tough, [I was] just sliding everywhere,” Verstappen reflected. “I couldn’t keep the car on track really, so that was very tough and then after that I could get Pierre [Gasly] back, but after that there was no more pace.

AS IT HAPPENED: Follow all the action from the F1 Sprint in Qatar

“[There was a] massive balance disconnect for me from entry into mid-corner so you can’t push the corner, you can’t carry the speed through the corner, and then of course also I ran out of front tyre, so it was very tough.

“I think it will be very difficult to also solve it for the rest of the weekend, but we’ll try to do our best.”

Verstappen hampered by ‘massive balance disconnect’ in Qatar Sprint