Sergio Perez was delighted to qualify seventh for the Monaco Grand Prix, admitting he took a gamble to run early during the final session to get a good lap in, thinking the weather was set to change.
The Sahara Force India driver feels he has a good opportunity to score points on Sunday, despite the team still waiting for their VJM08 to be updated, and hopes to have a good opening lap to enable that to happen.
“I’m really happy and excited with seventh place today,” revealed Perez. “I always say qualifying in Monaco counts for 90% of your final result, so it was important to be strong.
“To be quick here you need confidence in the car and in yourself, and I had both today. To make it through to Q3 was already a great effort by the team, but to be starting P7 means we have already done a lot of the hard work for the race.
“We went out early in Q3 because we thought the rain was coming and I had a mega lap. I was worried some of the others might improve their times, especially with the track evolution, but fortunately it was not the case.
“Tomorrow we have a good opportunity to score some important points. We know that anything can happen on a Sunday in Monaco, but I’m focussed on getting a clean start and a good first lap.”
