Perez shocked by Verstappen's data: 'I just couldn't do what Max was doing'

Perez shocked by Verstappen's data

At the post-qualifying press conference, Perez looked back on his weekend up to that point. "I was mainly missing confidence. When I was looking at the data and seeing what Max was able to do, I could not see… I could simply not do that and I was struggling a lot. It was not small differences, it was quite big," explained the Red Bull driver.

Ahead of qualifying, minor changes were made to his side of the garage. "We did one good change, which I won't go into too much in detail obviously but also just learning about the asphalt, I think, through qualifying and playing with a balance and finding that rhythm was much more important than I really thought," he continued.

It worked out well for the 33-year-old Mexican, who has the best starting position for the Miami Grand Prix. Verstappen starts from P9 due to a late red flag in qualifying, but there is a good chance the teammates will still meet in the race. Perez, however, is confident about his race pace and will hope he can keep the eager Fernando Alonso, Carlos Sainz and Kevin Magnussen behind him at the start.